A Summer of Two Worlds
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By the time May came to an end, Montreal was beginning to feel like home. I had explored my new surroundings, made some new connections, and already packed an absurd amount of adventure into my first month. But my new life had another side to it.
Every two weeks, I would leave the city behind and disappear into the wilderness of northern Quebec, trading cafés, concerts and city streets for drill rigs, helicopters, mosquitoes and twelve-hour shifts. Then, two weeks later, I’d return to Montreal and slip back into a completely different world. I hadn’t really appreciated it at first, but over the course of that summer I was beginning to build two lives simultaneously.
Summer in the North
Summer was the busiest time of year for us at work. It was essentially the only part of the year when extensive field work was possible, once the snow had finally disappeared and the landscape became accessible again. It was also the best season for drilling, so the entire exploration program ramped up: prospecting, geological mapping, sampling and drilling were all happening at once.
Our team grew considerably as well. A group of students joined us for summer internships, helping with field work, while several seasonal workers came aboard as additional technicians, geologists and support staff. As the exploration program ramped up, more and more helicopters began appearing around the camp.
We weren’t the only ones busy. Another company was also operating out of Mirage and exploring the surrounding area, bringing their own large crews and equipment. At the height of summer, there must have been six or seven helicopters flying around the area. It was crazy to watch.
What had started as a relatively small operation had transformed into a miniature aerial traffic network in the middle of northern Quebec.
A Taste of Everything
My shifts mostly remained on the familiar two-weeks-on, two-weeks-off rotation, with one particularly memorable exception: a four-week stint that felt like an eternity by the time it was over.
Most of us were rotated between the core shack and field work, which I actually preferred. The constant change kept things fresh. There is only so long you can perform the same repetitive tasks inside a garage, twelve hours a day, before time itself seems to slow down and your mind begins to feel trapped in a depressive eternity of repetition.
Field work was a very different beast. Every day brought something different, but it was also considerably more physically demanding. Long hikes through difficult terrain, coupled with weather that could swing from hot and humid to miserably wet, made even relatively simple tasks exhausting.
Then there was channel sampling.
The process began with digging trenches through the soil to expose the underlying bedrock. On a hot, sunny day, this was simply brutal manual labor, with sweat pouring down us as we hacked away at the ground. On an overcast and rainy day, it became a battle against mud and rapidly filling trenches.
Once the trench was prepared and the sampling boundaries marked, we reached what I considered the peak back-breaker of the operation. Holding a large rock saw, bent over an outcrop for hours at a time, we would cut channels through the exposed rock to obtain representative samples. We took turns, of course, but there was usually one more experienced or physically fit person who ended up doing most of the cutting, while the other person performed the considerably less glamorous task of continuously spraying water onto the blade.
And naturally, all of this happened while fully clothed and often wearing a bug net to protect ourselves from the millions upon millions of winged, blood-sucking insects that seemed to follow us around like a dark cloud of torment.
Work was hard. But it was never boring.
Beyond the Core Shack
Every now and then I also got to take on some of the more auxiliary outdoor tasks.
Some were directly related to drilling, such as scouting and spotting new drill holes or carrying out borehole deviation surveys once a hole had been completed. Others were less technical: long drives to exchange crews, or chauffeuring investors, clients and other visitors around the various sites.
I really came to appreciate the sheer variety of the work. There was always something different to do, somewhere different to go, or something new to learn. Compared with the repetitive routine of some other jobs, the diversity of tasks was one of the things I enjoyed most about working for this company.
There was simply never a dull moment.
Meanwhile, life inside the core shack continued to evolve as well. As we became more familiar with the workflow, we were constantly looking for little things we could improve. Sometimes that meant building an extra table or stand to make a particular task easier. Other times it was simply about making the workplace a little more comfortable.
It was beginning to feel less like a temporary workplace and more like something we were collectively building. And as our little work family grew closer, the post-work entertainment started evolving too.
Northern Quebec Cinema
One of the big hits in 2022 was movie night.
We had a projector sitting around that wasn’t being used, along with a massive garage door. Once we found a large white canvas to cover it, we had everything we needed for the ultimate northern Quebec cinema. It was… unconventional.
The canvas was thin enough that some of the thick tags and markings that had accumulated on the garage door over the years remained visible through it. Depending on the movie, these strange shadows and shapes could turn what was supposed to be a terrifying horror scene into an unintentionally hilarious comedy.
Then there were the sounds. The garage had a habit of producing its own soundtrack, with random machinery, water sprayers and other mysterious noises occasionally bubbling, rattling or squeaking in the middle of a movie.
It wasn’t exactly Hollywood. But those nights were a blast.
Two Lives
When I started this job, I hadn’t really intended to make friends.
That sounds harsher than I mean it. I obviously wanted to be friendly with my colleagues and get along with the people I worked with. But I deliberately wanted to keep my work friendships separate from my personal life. I didn’t want the same group of people I spent two weeks living and working alongside to also become my entire social circle back home.
Part of my reasoning was practical. In a work environment where people live together, work together and spend long stretches of time in close quarters, friendships can become an all-consuming social ecosystem. And while that can be great when everything is going well, I could also imagine how easily personal disagreements or drama could spill back into the workplace.
I wanted a boundary. Work was work. Home was home.
The irony, of course, was that I was beginning to develop a genuine social life in both worlds anyway.
There was a strange duality to my life during this period. At work, I was highly active and constantly engaged. I was surrounded by geology, field work, helicopters, drill rigs and people for twelve hours a day. There was always something happening, and I was generally in a very outgoing, energetic state.
Then I would return to Montreal and my other self would emerge.
At home, I naturally slipped back into my more introverted and sedentary mode. I enjoyed having my own space, spending quiet evenings by myself and generally doing very little when I wasn’t actively pursuing something. I wasn’t unhappy or antisocial; I simply needed considerably more motivation to turn an idea into an actual social outing.
The problem was that building a social life from scratch requires exactly that: getting off the couch and actually going somewhere. Fortunately, I had a plan.
Finding People in Montreal
Making new friends had generally come fairly easily to me, but bars and clubs had never been my thing. If I was going to meet people, I needed a different approach.
Enter the glorious Meetup app. I’d briefly used Meetup back in Denmark after a friend recommended it, so when I arrived in Montreal I decided to see what was available. Quite a lot, as it turned out.
Montreal had an active social scene built around all sorts of groups and activities. There were people organizing city walks, bowling nights, debates, bar meetups and countless other gatherings. It was practically a buffet of opportunities for someone trying to build a social life from scratch.
This was the way.
Over the following months, whenever I was in Montreal, I joined whatever outings caught my interest. I met quite a few people and made plenty of friendly acquaintances. But there was one persistent problem. My work schedule.
I’d go out, meet someone interesting, have a great conversation and perhaps suggest doing something again. Then I’d disappear back into northern Quebec for two weeks or more. By the time I returned, I would finally work up the energy to organize a spontaneous get-together, only to discover that they already had plans.
“How about next weekend?”
Sure. Except by next weekend, I would be back at work again.
My two-weeks-on, two-weeks-off schedule simply didn’t fit neatly into the rhythm of normal Monday-to-Friday life. Other people could casually make plans for next Saturday. For me, next Saturday could mean being several hundred kilometres into the wilderness.
I was meeting people. I was making connections. But turning those connections into proper friendships was proving considerably more difficult.
Exploring Montreal Further
Of course, my inability to coordinate with other people didn’t mean I had nothing to do. My unusual schedule left me with entire stretches of weekdays free, and I quickly realized there was no reason to wait for the weekend to explore Montreal.
One of the places I finally returned to was Saint Joseph’s Oratory. I’d first spotted the enormous basilica during my early exploration of Montreal, but at the time the construction work in front of it had made the entrance seem inaccessible. This time I found another approach, following Chemin de la Côte-des-Neiges around Mount Royal before cutting through Summit Woods and approaching the Oratory from behind.
And suddenly, there it was. The great dome rose above the trees and residential houses. No construction site blocking the approach this time.
Behind the basilica I discovered something I hadn’t expected: a peaceful enclosed garden known as the Garden of the Way of the Cross. It was apparently designed as an outdoor setting for the traditional Stations of the Cross, with a winding path through the greenery accompanied by a series of large sculptures.
The sculptures were scattered among trees, shrubs and winding paths, giving the whole place an almost secluded atmosphere despite being surrounded by one of the busiest parts of Montreal. There were flowers and patches of carefully maintained greenery everywhere, but the scale of the sculptures made the garden feel more like an open-air gallery than a conventional park.
It was one of those unexpected little discoveries that made wandering around Montreal so rewarding. You could leave a busy street, disappear into a patch of greenery and suddenly find yourself somewhere that felt completely removed from the city.
A World of Gardens
Another day took me east toward Montreal’s Olympic Park and the Montreal Botanical Garden.
This was another one of those places where I quickly realized that I had underestimated just how much there was to see. The garden occupies roughly 75 hectares and contains around thirty thematic gardens, an arboretum and numerous exhibition greenhouses.
Rather than feeling like one enormous conventional flower garden, it was more like a collection of different worlds stitched together into one sprawling landscape. Different sections had their own character, vegetation and design philosophy, so walking from one area to another could feel like stepping into an entirely different environment.
There were gardens dedicated to plants native to Quebec and North America, collections of medicinal plants, alpine plants, roses and other specialized flora. Elsewhere, the landscape became increasingly exotic. The Indigenous Peoples Garden explored the relationships between First Peoples and the plant world, while the Chinese Garden used traditional landscape principles, ponds, bridges and classical structures to create something that felt almost theatrical.
The Japanese Garden was more restrained. Its carefully arranged trees, shrubs, stones, streams and waterfalls created a much quieter and more meditative atmosphere. There was also a collection of bonsai and penjing that I found particularly interesting, with miniature trees painstakingly shaped to resemble their much larger counterparts.
And then there was simply the sheer amount of space. Paths wound through trees and flowerbeds in every direction, with benches and quiet corners scattered throughout. I could spend hours wandering without feeling as though I was retracing the same route.
The Botanical Garden also housed the Insectarium, as part of a much larger complex of attractions around the Olympic Park, including the Biodôme and Planetarium. I didn’t visit the Insectarium on this particular day, though I would eventually return to the area and give some of those other attractions the attention they deserved.
For now, I was perfectly happy just wandering through this enormous collection of plants and gardens. But while I was becoming increasingly comfortable exploring Montreal on my own, I was also slowly beginning to establish a few connections outside of work.
A Day on Île Notre-Dame
One of the people I met was Adam, a Canadian from out west who had recently moved to Montreal looking for a change of scenery. We had met at one of the Meetup social gatherings, and eventually arranged another outing together at Parc Jean-Drapeau.
This time I got to discover the second major island of Montreal’s downtown recreation complex: Île Notre-Dame. We had initially come simply to cool off on a warm summer afternoon at the island’s beach. But, as I was beginning to discover, Montreal had a habit of hiding considerably more interesting things behind seemingly ordinary places.
Île Notre-Dame turned out to be a rather bizarre collection of attractions. There were the Olympic Basin, built for the 1976 Montreal Olympics and used for rowing and other aquatic sports; the Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve, the Formula 1 race track that winds around the island but spends much of the year open to cyclists, runners and pedestrians; and, somewhat incongruously, the Casino de Montréal.
After cooling off in the lake, Adam and I decided to investigate the casino. I’d never actually been inside one before, so I was curious to see what the place was like. The casino occupied the former French pavilion from Expo 67, a suitably futuristic-looking building that had been repurposed into Quebec’s first government-run casino in 1993. It had since expanded into the neighboring former Québec pavilion, creating a sprawling multi-level entertainment complex.
Inside, there were floors of flashing electronic games and slot machines, along with the more traditional tables. Blackjack and roulette seemed to be particularly popular, with crowds gathered around the tables and people watching every move.
I was mildly disappointed not to see any poker tables. Maybe there was a secluded poker room somewhere that I simply never found. Or perhaps I was just looking in the wrong place.
Either way, neither Adam nor I had any intention of seriously gambling. We decided to each sacrifice about twenty dollars to the gods of probability, with the agreement that if either of us somehow doubled his money, we’d cash out and treat ourselves to dinner.
The casino had other plans. Our machines swallowed the money remarkably efficiently. No jackpot. No fancy dinner. Just free coffee and tea. Honestly, not the worst gambling loss imaginable.
The Idea of Seeing Clearly
Somehow, between exploring Île Notre-Dame, cooling off at the lake and donating twenty dollars to the Casino de Montréal, the subject of eyesight came up.
I’d worn glasses for most of my adult life and had never been particularly fond of them. They had simply become something I accepted as part of everyday life. Every now and then, though, I’d entertain the idea of getting rid of them permanently. Corrective laser surgery had been sitting somewhere in the back of my mind for years, waiting for some combination of money, trust and courage to make it happen.
Adam’s response was remarkably straightforward. “Why don’t you just get LASIK?” He had already undergone the procedure himself in Montreal and spoke extremely highly of the clinic and its surgeons. He had even specifically researched one particular surgeon, Dr. Bashur, whom he considered to be among the best in the world.
Adam had specifically asked for Bashur himself, but ended up having the procedure performed by his apprentice. The second-best surgeon in the world. At least according to Adam.
Jokes aside, his recommendation got me seriously thinking. I’d already been considering LASIK for years, but hearing about someone’s firsthand experience — and learning that Montreal indeed had some very highly regarded specialists — pushed the idea much further forward.
And as it turned out, Adam wasn’t going to be the only person encouraging me to take the plunge. Around the same time, the subject came up at work as well.
I’d been talking with our project manager when he pointed something out to me on a laptop screen. Without my glasses, I couldn’t make out what he was showing me from a few meters away and had to lean practically into the screen to see it. He then rather unexpectedly, gave me almost exactly the same advice.
He had recently undergone LASIK himself and described it as a life-changing experience.
Suddenly I had two people, from the two very different worlds I’d been trying so hard to keep separate, independently recommending the same thing. Maybe the universe was trying to tell me something.
So I decided to listen. It would still take some courage and research on my own part to actually go through with it.
Taking the Plunge
I started doing some serious research into LASIK and, before long, booked an evaluation at a Montreal clinic. The consultation involved a series of tests and scans to assess whether I was actually a suitable candidate. They found that I had both astigmatism and hypermetropia. The astigmatism could apparently be corrected very effectively, while the hypermetropia was a little trickier and meant the result might not be quite as perfect. Still, they expected the procedure to improve my vision substantially and, most importantly, potentially leave me without any need for glasses in everyday life.
That was good enough for me. The clinic and its surgeons also came highly recommended, which helped settle the remaining doubts. I decided to go ahead and booked the surgery for a couple of months later. My nervously joking statement to them was simply: “Please try not to blind me.”
Researching how the procedure worked was unnerving at first, but I soon managed to tap into my inner curiosity. After watching several rendered videos showing the process step by step, I gradually stopped shuddering at the thought of a blade cutting into my eyeballs.
It really was, and still is, I think, the blade aspect that gives people the heebie-jeebies when they think about LASIK. The laser ablation is more abstract. A blade, however, is something everyone can instinctively understand as a sharp, piercing object being brought anywhere near the most vulnerable parts of the human body.
A Gift From the Heavens
With the surgery still several weeks away, life carried on as usual. I returned to northern Quebec for another rotation, and for the moment, LASIK became something lurking somewhere in the back of my mind rather than the immediate concern it would eventually become.
Then, completely unexpectedly, something rather more exciting came out of nowhere.
Adrien, my old friend from Chicoutimi, sent me a message asking if I’d be interested in a free ticket to a metal concert in Montreal. He was supposed to go himself, but couldn’t make it because of his work schedule — the same kind of two-weeks-on, two-weeks-off life that I was living. Since it was fairly short notice, he was simply going to give the ticket away.
The gesture itself was already incredibly generous. But the band… the band elevated this act to something approaching a gift from the heavens. It was Rammstein.
Love them or hate them, Rammstein are one of the biggest names in metal. They are also famous for putting on some of the most spectacular live shows on the planet, combining their heavy music with elaborate theatrics, enormous stage effects, and enough fire and pyrotechnics to make the average concert look like a school talent show.
I was speechless. Of course I accepted. My shift would end a few days before the concert, so the timing worked out perfectly. Respect and a huge shout-out to my man Adrien. Thanks again for the fantastic gift!
The Build-Up
The spontaneous concert gave me something else to occupy my mind during my August time off. Work helped too. When I was up north, I could completely immerse myself in work and shut out everything happening back home, including the surgery slowly approaching on the horizon. It made the waiting period considerably easier.
I also discovered that one of my colleagues, let’s call him Max, who I had gradually become friends with, was going to the concert as well. So on the evening of August 21, we met up and, together with some of his friends, headed toward the mass of people gathering on Saint Helen’s Island at Parc Jean-Drapeau.
The sheer scale of the event was already obvious on the metro. The trains heading toward Jean-Drapeau were packed with metalheads of every variety.
Once we reached the island, things got even more serious. The whole setup looked less like an ordinary concert and more like a small temporary festival. Booths and bars lined the walkways toward the stage, selling merchandise, food and drinks, while tens of thousands of people gradually packed into the enormous concert area.
And then there was the stage.
The Towering Black Citadel
Rammstein had brought their enormous custom-built stadium production with them, designed specifically around the band’s particular brand of theatrical insanity. A towering central structure dominated the scene, crowned by the giant illuminated Rammstein logo. The whole thing looked less like a stage and more like some enormous industrial fortress that had been dropped into the middle of the island.
There was a very good reason for that. Rammstein’s pyrotechnics are so extensive that the production is effectively built around them. The 2022 stage incorporated specially engineered pyro systems and custom touring structures, with the central tower alone rising roughly fifty meters into the air. The Montreal production was around sixty meters wide, and getting the whole monster from one city to the next required a staggering logistical operation.
The area in front of the stage was divided into several sections. The very front was the infamous Feuerzone, essentially the place where you voluntarily paid extra to stand closer to the flames. We had regular tickets, but managed to squeeze our way nearly to the front of our section. This was as close as we could get to the stage. Two enormous towers stood on either side of us, already giving us a pretty good indication of what was about to happen.
As dusk settled over Montreal, the lights came on.
Then, with the thunderous roar of more than forty thousand of people, Rammstein took the stage.
A Night of Fire
Rammstein had been one of the first bands that got me into metal nearly two decades earlier. My musical tastes had long since moved toward more technical and complex styles, but they had, and always would remain an iconic and legendary band for me.
Standing there in front of that mighty stage, headbanging alongside thousands of other fans while hearing their music performed live, felt like a genuinely historic experience.
Max and I sang along to most of the songs. Well… sang is perhaps being generous. We shouted the lyrics in tandem, in our respective broken and mediocre German.
Meanwhile, every song seemed to have its own visual identity. The stage constantly transformed between pulsating light shows and what looked like an enormous industrial furnace. As the music intensified, flames erupted not only from the main stage but from the towers on either side of us as well, blasting heat into the night and illuminating the sky.
We could feel the heat even from where we stood. I could only imagine what the people in the VIP section directly in front of the stage were experiencing. Absolute pyrotechnic madness. And it was glorious.
Adieu
From beginning to end, it was easily the grandest spectacle I had ever attended. I dare say it was one of the greatest live shows ever.
We later heard that the concert had been so loud that residents of Longueuil, across the St. Lawrence River, had complained about the noise. Considering the concert was taking place on an island with no residential neighborhood immediately surrounding it, that was quite an achievement in itself.
After roughly two hours of adrenaline-pumping spectacle, the show eventually reached its emotional finale. The final song was Adieu.
Fittingly enough, the title itself seemed almost tailor-made for the occasion.
The song stayed with us long after the concert was over. In fact, my colleague and I liked it so much that it eventually became something of a ritual at work. For months afterward, we’d play Adieu on our last day before heading off for our time off.
The song had become the unofficial soundtrack to saying goodbye to another rotation.
The concert had been absolutely epic, and I genuinely hope Adrien eventually got to experience it himself. It was one of those shows that I think every metalhead should see at least once in their lifetime.
The Season Begins to Wind Down
The summer had passed, and early September found me back up north for another rotation. The field season was gradually winding down, the air was getting noticeably colder. My LASIK appointment was no longer some distant event sitting on the calendar. It was getting close.
Fortunately, there was still plenty of work to keep my mind occupied. By this point, my paperwork with the Ordre des géologues du Québec had finally been approved, and I had officially moved into the exploration geologist role. After months of working in the core shack and watching the other geologists log, I was finally getting to do it myself.
It was a transition I had been looking forward to since early summer. I had spent a lot of time observing how the others approached their logs, comparing their interpretations with what I could see in the core and gradually developing my own ideas about how I would approach the same task. Now I finally had the opportunity to put all of that accumulated knowledge into practice.
The learning curve seemed mild and enjoyable. Just as teching had eventually turned into a little friendly competition, logging soon became its own informal race. How much core could you get through? How quickly could you log it without sacrificing quality? Who was the fastest logger in this part of the core shack?
It was another welcome distraction from the increasingly imminent LASIK appointment.
Team Dynamics
The team itself had also continued to evolve. One of the newer additions over the summer was a French geologist I had become quite friendly with. I’ll call him Luc. He had previously worked for another exploration company before joining us, along with several other French colleagues.
Interestingly, that was the same company I had nearly ended up working for earlier that year, before ultimately accepting the position that brought me to Mirage. Hearing Luc and the others talk about their experiences there made me realize just how close I had come to taking a very different path. Let’s just say that, in hindsight, I had apparently dodged a fairly substantial bullet.
Luc and I also discovered that we shared a similar brand of European humor, which made working together particularly entertaining. We were both fairly ambitious and competitive by nature, and that attitude quickly found its way into more than just our geological work. Before long, we were competing over logging speed and quality during the day, and occasionally recreational activities after hours.
The Garage Gym
There wasn’t really a gym at Mirage, or at least, not much of one at the time. So, as usual, we improvised.
I had been pushing for more regular workouts after our shifts, partly because I genuinely wanted to train and partly because getting other people involved gave me an extra reason to do it myself. We used whatever we could find around camp. For a while, some wide wooden beams served as our pull-up bars. The garage door also became an improvised piece of strength-training equipment.
At one point, Luc and I turned one-arm shoulder presses into yet another completely unnecessary competition. He won… by just one repetition. Considering that we were both taking the whole thing far more seriously than was remotely necessary, I was ridiculously proud of how close it had been. I suspect he was a little surprised too.
The improvised workouts became another small part of our routine. Nothing fancy, nothing resembling a proper gym, but it gave us something physical to do after twelve-hour shifts and another excuse to mess around with each other.
Looking back, it was these little things that made the camp experience so enjoyable. We were working hard, but we were also gradually developing our own routines, competitions and inside jokes. But the work shift wasn’t going to last forever. Soon enough, I was back on the plane, heading home to Montreal and I had a rather intimidating appointment waiting for me in just a few days.
The Night Before
I lay in bed the night before the procedure, trying to calm my nerves. Slowly coming to grips with the fact that it was out of my hands now. I wasn’t going to chicken out at the last minute. After all, I was going to be in the hands of some very highly qualified professionals… who hopefully wouldn’t leave me blind.
Oh well. At least I got to see Rammstein live with my own eyes. What more could I ask for?
What will be will be.
The Waiting Game
At the LASIK clinic on the day of the surgery, I spent a considerable amount of time signing various forms and papers across different offices, as well as paying the hefty sum for the procedure. Each checkpoint brought me one step closer to the surgery. And each step came with another stretch of waiting.
The waiting was the worst part. Every few minutes brought me closer to the moment when I would actually have to lie down on the operating table. Simultaneously giving my imagination more time to come up with things to worry about.
The staff knew this quite well and offered patients a Xanax pill if they wished. Despite my nervousness, however, I refused it. Was it my stubbornness? Hard-headedness? Was I trying to prove some macho point to myself? I don’t know. All I know is that I wanted to confront the whole thing with a clear mind and remain fully aware of what was happening.
Eventually, after the long paper trail, I found myself sitting in a sofa chair in the dimly lit hallway next to the operating room. I watched the patients ahead of me go through the various stages before entering the room myself. Eventually, the nurse came to me.
I tilted my head back as instructed so she could put the local anaesthetic drops into my eyes. Except “drops” wasn’t really the right word. It felt more like a water fountain of liquid solution being blasted directly into my eyeballs. She kindly reminded me to keep my eyes open. I did my best to comply, despite my eyes being absolutely drenched in the stuff.
After the eye shower, I didn’t immediately feel anything. The nurse told me it would start feeling a little strange. Within a couple of minutes, it sure did.
The best way I can describe it is that my eyes felt drunk. My brain and everything else felt completely normal, conscious and aware, yet my eyes somehow felt as though they were floating independently of the rest of me. Weird stuff.
A few minutes later, I was invited into the operating room.
Meet the Best in the World
The surgeon introduced himself as Dr. Bashur, the best in the world. I replied “Oh, I know. I read your résumé.” What a boss introduction. Somehow, that immediately made me feel more relaxed.
The room itself had a very calming ambience. The lighting was dim and warm, and the whole place genuinely felt inviting. I had to give them credit: they were doing a very good job of making what was about to happen feel considerably less terrifying.
Soon enough, I was lying down on the operating table and receiving instructions from the staff. They gently positioned my head into the support apparatus and secured it in place. At one point, I recall Dr. Bashur asking me to blink. So I did. Awkwardly. “No, no. Blink normally.” I tried again. “Is that normal?” I started laughing. Apparently I had forgotten what normal, relaxed blinking was like.
Once I passed the blinking test, they prepared my eyes for the procedure and somehow secured my eyelids in place. I’m not entirely sure what mechanism they used; I remember feeling some light pressure, but there was no real discomfort.
Then came the most important instruction: don’t blink, and simply stare at the green light on the optics of the laser device that had been brought up close to my face. They even gave me a stress ball and told me that if I felt the urge to blink, I could simply squeeze it instead.
My mission objectives were clear. Stare at the green dot at all costs. No blinking. I was in a video game.
Then they began talking to each other in their strange alien doctor language, throwing around various technical terms that I couldn’t understand.
Mad Scientist Mode
After all the videos I’d watched, I had the entire procedure more or less memorized in my head. Once they began, I found myself curiously paying attention to each step and mentally visualizing what part of the process they were performing. After stressing about it for the entire morning in the waiting rooms, I somehow managed to flip a switch in my head. My scientific curiosity completely overrode whatever anxiety was still lingering.
The staff also made sure to tell me what I was about to see or not see. At one point they warned me that things in my right eye would go dark or fuzzy for a few moments. They then covered the eye with some kind of device. Soon afterwards, the device was removed and I could see again, although everything was considerably blurrier. I could also make out what looked like a piece of something sitting on my eye.
From everything I’d learned, I knew what this was. They had made the incision and lifted the famous LASIK flap. Holy… crap. I had a piece of my eye… on my eye. My mind was blown. This was insane. In a cool way. I didn’t feel a thing, by the way.
Also, the “blade” they used apparently wasn’t really a knife-like object as I’d imagined. It was more like a tiny sliding potato peeler. Which, when you think about it, makes sense. Eyes are kind of potato-shaped… Next came the laser. I could hear the machine priming itself before producing the familiar rapid-fire ta-ta-ta-ta-ta sound.
I was already quite familiar with laser ablation from my own research work, although I’d used it on minerals rather than human eyeballs. Then came the smell. It was faint, but unmistakable. The same smell as when we caught insects in the electric bug zapper during my work rotations. Ho…ly… crap. I was smelling my eyes burning. WIIIILD.
I’m telling you, I was in full mad-scientist mode, even though I was the subject being operated on. And somehow, this made the whole thing absolutely fascinating rather than scary.
And Then It Was Over
They repeated the procedure on the other eye and then covered both eyes, letting them rest for about a minute. Afterwards, they examined both eyes with their observation equipment and quickly gave me the green light to go home, along with instructions for medication and rest over the following days.
The entire procedure had taken less than ten minutes. I never felt any actual pain throughout it. There was some mild discomfort once or twice, but really, nothing worth writing home about.
Afterwards, my eyes felt strange. I was given a pair of black plastic protective glasses, but even with them on, once I stepped outside I could somehow feel the wind blowing into my eyes. Like… inside them. That was weird. And not particularly pleasant.
I’d asked the person at reception to call me a taxi, so I didn’t have to wait long before getting into one. I could see, but the combination of the discomfort and the knowledge of what my poor eyes had just been subjected to made me keep them closed as much as possible, only opening them slightly when I needed to see where I was going.
Once home, I lay down on the couch and called my mom to update her. We talked for about an hour while I rested my eyes before I eventually ventured out to buy the necessary eye drops at the pharmacy.
I was still wary of opening my eyes too much. But I vividly remember the first moment I looked into the distance while walking down the street. The sharpness of my vision was incredible. I could make out an old lady’s face from across the street. And this was barely a couple of hours after surgery.
My friends were right. This really was life-changing
Laser Eyes
Any lingering discomfort and strange sensations were gone by the second day. I took care to drastically limit my screen time and simply rest and medicate my eyes as instructed.
The following morning, I returned to the clinic for my first follow-up appointment. It was a Saturday, and the otherwise busy downtown building was eerily quiet. The only people wandering through the elegant marble-clad corridors seemed to be other post-op patients like myself, silently making their way to and from the clinic. All of us wearing the exact same black shades. We were agents of the Matrix. The follow-up went well. My eyes seemed to be healing fine. Just some lingering inflammation that could last for a while. The eye drops would help with that.
Over the following weeks, I kept testing my vision while walking around the city. I’d often find myself wondering whether I was still seeing as well as before, or perhaps better, or maybe somehow worse.
The mind has a funny way of adapting to new visual settings very quickly, so after a while it became surprisingly difficult to judge whether anything had actually changed without a professional test. As I read, second-guessing yourself after the procedure was apparently quite common and could persist for a long time.
Hell, even today, years later, I still occasionally catch myself wondering: Do I still see that well? Has anything changed? The best way to know, of course, is to get a proper checkup. So far, so good.
The Comfort of Independence
My LASIK experience had been overwhelmingly positive. But another thing worth noting in retrospect was the fact that I had gone through the entire process alone.
I mean, I obviously had supportive and encouraging words from my family, but physically, I was alone. I never asked anyone for help. Not even something as simple as a car ride home after the procedure, which I’m sure any of my colleagues would have gladly offered.
No. I chose to do this alone, just as I had chosen to do many things alone over the previous years. I don’t know if that was a good or a bad thing. Maybe neither. I’m not even trying to make some grand statement about it. I’m simply observing that somewhere along my journey, I had become extremely independent.
Part of it was probably my undying pride, still clinging to the idea that I could and would do anything and everything on my own. Not to prove a point to anyone. Not even to myself anymore. Just because.
I guess it had become my comfort zone. I had learned to trust myself more than anyone else. Perhaps to the detriment of my relationships with other people.
By that point, the thought had begun floating around in my head that perhaps I had developed some serious trust issues over the past years. But who cares, I’d say. People come and go anyway. I’d always have myself to keep me company.
The Last Rotation
I was back up at Mirage for my final rotation of the year. The weather had turned grey and grim, with plenty of rain and fog. The last of the helicopters were now struggling to take off in these conditions, making field operations more difficult this late in the season. We were slowly closing up the final drill holes and finishing our work in the core shack. The hectic, high-energy environment of the summer had gradually dialed down into a much more mellow pace.
Among our team, we were discussing plans for the rest of the year. I definitely had some big plans for late October: a well-deserved week of sun and fun somewhere far to the south, close to the ocean. We also discussed our futures with the company, since many of us were still working on temporary contracts that would be ending soon. Our field lead assured me and the others that we would be back the following year.
That was very comforting to hear. I had thoroughly enjoyed my professional journey with them so far and was very keen on staying.
Thus, my field adventures in 2022 were coming to a close on a very hopeful note. On top of that, I now had my newfound sharp eyesight. Not 100% exactly, but something like 85%, according to the last checkup. It was a good number. More importantly, I didn’t need glasses anymore. Not for driving. Not for anything. I was happy with it.
I had also experienced one of the greatest live shows on Earth during the summer.
And to think that earlier the same year I was still in frozen Chicoutimi, recovering mentally from the nuclear year that was 2021 and dealing with my best friend moving back to Europe. By this point, I had experienced so much already. 2022 truly felt like the antithesis of 2021. But it wasn’t over just yet.
The sunny shores of South Beach, Miami, were waiting for me. There was just one small complication.
Before I could get there, I had to deal with the rather complicated matter of getting into the United States. And that meant taking a little detour back to August, when I found myself travelling to Ottawa on a rather unusual mission: obtaining a US visa.
That adventure deserves its own story.