Less Laser, Please

What a long day. Just sitting in a half-comfortable chair for two or so hours really drains the energy. I am so tired, and it was not even I who got operated on today.

We leave the apartment around ten, order an uber and both of us complain in Swedish about the drivers loud breathing. We were happy to leave the car, but less happy to have arrived at the igloo called Mount Elizabeth Hospital. I might have mentioned that it is cold inside buildings in Singapore, but nothing beats this hospital (at least among the buildings I have been to... perhaps the cinema can share the first place). I compliment myself here since I was clever enough to pack a unnecessarily heavy backpack. In the backpack was two hoodies, two books, one gaming device (Nintendo 3Ds), a portable charger and a bottle of water. I was prepared for a long wait. I only failed to bring breakfast, so I got pretty hungry after only an hour of waiting.

Eventually our wait had come to a first end. We were called, got a seat inside the financial advice room and a lady went through a digital paper with John. When all that was done John was handed an envelope with a handwritten text saying admission @ 12:15. We left the small booth and John thought he should hand the envelope to the admission counter (actually called island counter), but no. They did not want that until 12:15. So we took two new seats for another forty five minutes of waiting. Then a man came up to us, said John's name, asked to be followed and we were escorted to level three. I might point out that I had, during the wait, been reading, but not yet had any use of the other things in my survival-pack.

Of course, since we both had been there five months earlier for the exact same operation (Laser not so fun after all), we knew exactly where to go. We nodded towards our kind escort when he pointed out the restroom I had used on our last visit and showed us into the waiting room where we had been months ago. This time, another man sat in a chair. We ignored him best we could, keeping up the small talk even though John was trying to not think by scrolling through reddit. A nurse came in to put eye drops in John's left eye, which she continued doing every fifteen minutes. I fished up a hoodie, the waiting room was cold, sank down in the now uncomfortable chair and kept reading a book. As time went by, John's left pupil got larger while the other shrank to its smallest to balance things out.

Quarter past one the nurse fetched him for the surgery. I put down my book, picked up the 3Ds, thinking I might get somewhere while I wait. He left the room, I managed to start the game, run around for a while and then he was back. I heard his voice down the hallway saying it's like being at the dentist. I have no idea what he was talking about (apparently he had gotten drops of anaesthesia in his mouth), but suddenly he was back and they checked his blood-pressure. His eye was very red and the pupil still as large as it could go. He smiled and made small jokes, but I could tell he was in pain. The operation went well, again, and we got escorted to the ground floor. I think I annoyed the man escorting us - I knew the way and walked in front of him even though he tried to pass me.

Again, we sat down in the slightly more comfortable chairs to wait for our man to see if we needed to do something else before leaving. John got called to the island counter and there had been a misunderstanding about the insurance. The lady wanted John to pay S$3000 up front, which should have been cleared with the insurance company yesterday. She went to the back to talk to our financial adviser and double checked. After a she gave us green light we left the hospital.

John will go back in a week for a check up.