I get the jitters when I visit hospitals, whether it’s to see a family member, a friend, or for some other reason. I have never been hospitalized in my life. Call it the irony of it all—a week back, I was at the BP Memorial Teaching Hospital, fidgeting in a chair in nervous anticipation outside the OT (operation theater). My wife sat beside me.

After the age of 45, most people need reading glasses. I did after 50, nothing abnormal, only age-related—presbyopia, the doctor said. But things changed. My vision for distance seemed to fall in my mid-sixties—nothing to fret about; I got power lenses for nearsightedness.

After a year, I seemed to have problems with my right eye—blurry vision, even with glasses. I saw the doctor again. He diagnosed my right eye with macular edema: fluid build-up in the macula, in the center of the retina.

Nothing alarming; it’s in its early stages. However, as I had underlying conditions like diabetes and hypertension, timely medication was advisable. The doctor said I needed to take three injections in the eye, one each month—the sooner, the better.

The doctor further added that as the clinic did not have the required facilities, he would administer the injection at the hospital where he worked—in the operation theater. That scared the wits out of me.

Since the new coronavirus variant had hit Kathmandu hard, my wife and I felt edgy when we got off the cab at the hospital. Thank the stars—there was no crowd, only one patient in the OT lounge. He sat beside his wife, all masked up, just like we were.

As we struck a conversation, he told me he had come for his third and last shot. Curious, I asked if the previous injections helped. He sounded confident the medication had improved his vision by 90 percent.

As we waited, the nurse at the counter approached and marked our eyelids with sticky paper tape—his left and mine right, and asked us to wait. She appeared to be the only staff member and seemed stressed, as she did not seem forthcoming when I asked some questions.

A little later, another nurse joined her, and the reason for her brusque manner became clear. She was lamenting about a problem at home to her fellow sister: the coronavirus had struck four of her family members. Still, she had to report for duty—she moaned.

Time seemed to drag on leaden feet as we sat tight. The sister at long last approached and asked us to put on gowns and shed our shoes. She then ushered us into the glass door with the ominous-looking letters—OT (Operation Theater).

The room was a small cubicle with the operating room behind a glass partition. The nurse asked me to wait as the other patient entered. I had a partial view of the main chamber through the glass.

A TV screen hung by a wall as the room seemed busy with masked nurses and staff pacing back and forth in green gowns and surgical skull caps. I could not see the doctor, but the room seemed to buzz with several young fellows who appeared like interns.

I sat tight with muddled thoughts and butterflies in my stomach. As my eyes fell on the TV screen through the glass partition, it showed a film on what looked like an eye operation.

Then I got a nasty jolt—it was not just a random film but live footage of the fellow patient with me a little earlier. I cringed and hurriedly averted my eyes as a gloved hand approached with a hypodermic syringe.

In barely 20 minutes, it was over, and the nurse summoned me. I was in a stupor as I lay on the operating table. I do not precisely recall what happened next as I got blinded by the glare of the surgical light—I just had blurry images that looked like gloved hands briskly working on my eye.

Before I knew it, it was all over: no pain, no sensation of the needle—nothing. The doctor told me to see him after three weeks. The ordeal was over.