Ouch!

This will be the last self-inflicted surgery on my body for a while! (Though the hernia op was necessary rather than desirable).

After getting shot of my glasses, I and other people noticed more the little cholesterol spots above my eyes. Especially people shorter than me. It's no problem getting shot of them, too, I was told.

Off I tootled to the beauty clinic that I trust (sounds as if I have been to hundreds - but here I know the medical director a bit, who gets wheeled out in the media every time someone talks about larger or smaller breasts. He's not getting his hands on mine - whichever way! Though he's an attractive young man....).

Long discussion about the hows and when. Options were surgical removal or laser. Both have after-effects I was told, of the puffy and bruising variety. Wunderbar.

Plumped for the laser technology, and in the middle of conversations which were harder to understand than at last week's op, managed to imply that I did not want anything for the pain. I thought 'after procedure pain' - can't be that bad, I thought; they delivered 'during procedure pain'. They certainly did. (To be honest, though, it's not supposed to be so good to have local anaesthesia in the face; there are risks!).

This is where this frigging communications thing comes in. Occasionally they would tell me what they did, and maybe they did it more often, but I did not understand - if I cannot see because my eyes are covered it really does not aid my understanding. So they'd come at me with the laser, clack, clack, clack - each 'clack' like being hit with a little pointy dart, and then something else that felt as if they were pulling things, very resistant things, out of my skin. I certainly did not have advance warning of everything they were doing to me. Having this information really helps to deal with discomfort - my experience in Turkey was wonderful in this regard. Definitely not like plucking your eyebrows - that would have been a walk-over in comparison.....

It had better work!