Eyes

When I was a little kid, about six or seven years old, I really wanted to wear glasses. I'm not sure why, exactly, but I think I wanted to be like my father. (Also, and this is probably really weird, I used to close or cover my eyes and pretend I was blind, just to see how well I would function. Maybe it's not so weird; my grandmother was blind, so it was perhaps natural that I would wonder.) My eye exams were always good, and shortly after one of those check-ups I remember my mom holding up an ad from the paper to show me something. I couldn't see it. She thought I was exaggerating my vision difficulty but took me back to the eye doctor anyway. My vision had deteriorated rapidly in the few months since my appointment. I needed glasses. Now, if you had seen me in glasses at the age of eight, you would have had to laugh. I got tortoise-rimmed octagonal frames, and that was around the same year I started to gain weight too. In my school pictures from the ages of eight through twelve are simply hideous. Add to that the fact that I wasn't allowed to wear jeans to school until seventh grade, and -- well let's just say I wasn't the best looking or most popular kid in school.

My vision, over the years, would hold steady for long periods of time and then suddenly drop off drastically. I began wearing contacts when I was fifteen -- and I had lost enough weight by then that I was no longer the target of school bullies for that -- and my life improved, even though my vision didn't. By the time I was an adult, I was just shy of the mark for legal blindness, but still I was able to wear contacts instead of glasses. I hated glasses by then, and still wonder why I had ever wanted them. In my mid-thirties, I started having problems with my eyes, which the doctor said were caused by many years of wearing contacts. I had started growing blood vessels behind my eyes -- apparently that's a bad thing -- from many years of wearing contacts. He said that if I didn't go back to wearing glasses instead, I'd need cornea transplants by the time I was forty. He didn't need to tell me twice. Back to glasses I went. I was allowed to wear contacts once or twice a month, on special occasions, but for the most part I was stuck with my glasses, which at least by that time I had updated to something more fashionable.

About twelve years ago, I had lasik, a nasty procedure with an amazing result. The procedure took fifteen seconds per eye, and the results were immediate. For the first time I could remember, I could tell the difference between shampoo and conditioner without holding the bottle two inches from my face. I could go in the ocean and see where my family (and belongings) were on the beach. I could go on and on about the things I was able to do after my eyes were "fixed", but I won't. If you've had bad vision problems, you'll understand. If you haven't, nothing I could say can get across how wonderful this transformation was. For the first five years after my surgery, my vision was 20/15. Today at my opthamologist appointment, it was 20/20. I've been having some cloudiness in my vision, which it turns out is related to cataracts. They aren't bad enough (yet) to require surgery. Also, I "failed" my glaucoma test (my father had glaucoma, so that's one problem I've always worried about) but I wasn't far out of normal range so my doctor is just going to keep an eye on it, so to speak. I did get a prescription for very low-strength glasses. My doctor said I could have it filled or not; it might sharpen images for me if I want to try it. I'll probably at least give it a try. The prescription is for bifocals. I'm officially old!