Getting a new look on this life

I’m seeing the world through new eyes these days — almost literally.

Yes, Old Corporal had his second and final cataract surgery last Monday. For the first time since I was about 12 years old, I can see things clearly, and brightly, without glasses. Well, except for reading and using the computer, and I bought a cheap pair of “cheaters” for that. Amazing how well they work — the white pages look whiter, the black type blacker, and the book, newspaper or video screen even looks wider. Amazing! What won’t they think of next?    cataracts-street-scenes

My vision was normal as a young child. But I was a voracious reader — a constant one, every moment I wasn’t in school or doing chores for my folks at home. Gradually, as I turned 12 and then 13, I started to notice that things looked just a little fuzzy when I closed my right eye and used only the left. Finally, by the time I was 14, the world viewed through my right eye had gotten just a little fuzzy, too, while the deficiency had gotten worse in my left one.

I didn’t say anything to my parents about it. What 13-year-old kid, especially a boy, wants to go around wearing glasses? I could hear the other kids now: “Four Eyes! Four Eyes!” But finally in my eighth grade year, the old North Madison School had a vision exam for us kids — they hadn’t had one for several years — and they sent a letter home to my parents: “Wayne needs to see an optometrist.”

My first pair of glasses had a fairly strong correction in the left eye, a very slight one in the right. Over the years, the left eye — my reading, dominant eye — became steadily more near-sighted, with my right eye being only about half as bad.

Funny about glasses: If you’ve never worn them, you might think you’d always be conscious of them, perched up there on your nose. Well, you eventually get used to them; you’re not any more aware of them than you are of the shoes on your feet — unless either doesn’t fit right. But even with the best-fitted glasses, you can still feel that you’re looking at the world through a pair of horse blinders, since the areas outside the perimeters of your lenses, your peripheral vision, will be blurry. Especially if your eyes were as bad as mine were.

When I started dating, it seemed like every girl I wanted to kiss was wearing glasses, too. Awkward. We usually had to take them off. The glasses, that is.   cataract

Over the years, me and my glasses became like an old married couple — used to each other. They were the first thing I reached for when I got up, the last thing I put aside when I went to bed. Walking down the street without them not only reduced the world to a blur, but I felt naked without them. So I almost never did that. Without the specs, I was like a man stumbling around in a fog. Without them, I couldn’t function.

A few years ago, when I was getting an eye exam at Dr. Bizer’s in Clarksville, the doctor said, “You have a cataract starting in your right eye.” I was shocked. A cataract? I thought only old people got them! Yeah, I know; the years creep up on us, don’t they?

He said it would be a few years before I would need cataract surgery. And it was.

Another cataract came along on the lens of my left eye. I started to notice that if I went into a place with a lot of fluorescent lights, like Wal-Mart, things became all blurry and glaring. I had a hard time recognizing friends at any distance. In a less-than-ideal light, faces were indistinct. At night, outside, headlights and streetlights had halos around them that hadn’t been there before. It was annoying, and worrying.

I’ve had generalized anxiety disorder since childhood. I tend to worry. This problem with my eyes gave me plenty of ammunition for paranoid imaginings. What if I was going blind? Even though I had been assured that it was just cataracts, I thought, “Easy enough for them to say! They’re MY eyes!”

But, as it turns out, the doctors were right, and I was worrying about nothing. Late last year, I contacted the VA hospital in Louisville, where I get my medical treatment, to see about an eye exam to find out if it was time for the surgery. They checked my eyes; they said, Yes, Mr. Engle, we can schedule the surgery as soon as you want.

So, on Jan. 24, I was wheeled on a gurney into an operating room at VA, four sets of drops having been placed into my right eye, an IV into my arm, which fed a mild sedative into my veins. But, actually, I was pretty calm.

They don’t put you out for cataract surgery. You’re awake the whole time. Because of the effect of the drops, and the sedative, you don’t feel pain. Yes, it is a little uncomfortable. But in 10 minutes — 15 max — they’re finished, and they’re wheeling you back into the room where you lie quietly and recuperate for a half hour or so, then get dressed again.

Oh, yes, you’re not allowed to drive home; you have to have someone with you to sign you in and out and provide transportation. The doctor said, “Now, Mr. Engle, you need to come back for a follow-up exam tomorrow, and you can drive down if you like.” I said, “Really? I couldn’t before!” Always good to keep a sense of humor at tense times, if you can.

Six weeks later, last Monday, March 7, they did the surgery on my left eye. It took a little longer, was a little more uncomfortable. But the results so far have been great. At a distance, in certain lights, some fine details are still a little blurry. But the eye is coming along wonderfully. And the right eye has already tested 20/20 on the eye chart.   cataract-2

How do they do cataract surgery? Well, they slice through the thin outer membrane around the front of  your eye, and fold it back. Then they use a laser to break up and vacuum out your natural lens, which has become clouded by the cataract. Finally, they take an artificial lens, made from your most recent eye chart test results, and slide it into the place where your natural lens was. Then they fold the membrane back into place; it grows fast again within a day or two.

Oh, there are some nuisance aspects. For a week you have to be careful not to bend over from the waist (deep kneebends are an acceptable substitute, if you have to pick up something from the floor); not to lift anything heavier than 25 pounds; not “strain” (I think that has to do with your bowel movements); put three kinds of drops into your eye several times a day; and wear a patch over the eye while you’re asleep, so you don’t accidentally stick your finger into it or something.

I’m almost into Day Six of that; after Monday, I don’t have to wear the patch at night any more, and I can cut back on one of the three types of eye drops. Meanwhile, my left eye, the one done last Monday, seems to be getting a little clearer each day.

Seeing clearly again, without wearing glasses all the time, at my age, and with the advanced myopia (near-sightedness) that I had, almost seems like a miracle.

If I had been born in, say 1910, instead of 1945, and had had the same surgery when I was 66, I would have had to then lie in a hospital bed with my head blocked between two sandbags, for — oh, I’ve heard different lengths of time; but it would have felt like forever. Before the invention of the artificial lens, after the surgery they would have had to fit me with special glasses with extremely thick lenses — coke bottle monstrosities — that I would have had to wear every waking minute if I wanted to see any of this wonderful world for the rest of my life.

Most of us just take the time in history we were born for granted. You get the luck of the draw. Sometimes the draw leaves you blind, or deaf, or in a wheelchair.

But sometimes, because of when you were born, and how long it took you to need the latest technology to continue to lead a meaningful life, you win.

I did. Thank God.

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