Friday Follies - I Can See Clearly Now My Lens Is Gone...

As the gong of my Grandmother's mantle clock chimed on a bright sunny morning, I realised that this would be the very last day that I would spend with one of my body parts.

It's a part of my body that I have never given much thought to, nor really cared about to be honest.  But as with everything in life, when it starts misbehaving, it gets noticed.

My eyes have always been a bit of a pain, inheriting short sightedness and astigmatism from my father led to a lifetime of a love/hate relationship with glasses.  Getting glasses as a teenager, when I was already in the throws of awkwardness, did not help matters, and I resented them greatly.

As the years went on, I learned to live with them, and better yet, learned to live with contact lenses.  What a great invention they are, allowing clear and focussed eyesight without the hassle and annoyance of glasses.  Contacts have their own negatives - I was forever dealing with cat hair in my eyes (you don't know pain until you have had fur caught in your contacts) and falling asleep with them in by accident after a fun night out.  Still, it was all worth it to avoid being a four eyes.



 I loved my contacts too much and got told to give them a break as I was wearing them for too many hours a day, causing blood vessels to grow in my eyes.  No permanent damage at this stage, but I was heading down that road.  I weaned myself off their use and learned to like my glasses.

Leaping forward to 2010, I took the plunge and got laser surgery on my eyes to correct my vision.  I had heard horror stories in the 80's and 90's and was cautious, but science and technology had progressed to a point where my astigmatism was not the barrier that it used to be.

I won't lie, they laser surgery was awful, but thankfully over very quickly.  That day and the next day were filled with a variety of drops and very itchy eyes, but the next day...well.....WOW!  I could see!  Without glasses.  My vision improved over the next days, weeks and months and eventually settled and I was absolutely delighted with the results.  I could buy all of those great fun sunglasses, covered in bling, and not worry about having my glasses for driving. My muscle memory took a while to be retrained, and I was constantly reaching for my glasses in the morning, or pushing them up my face during the day.  Those habits took a long time to break.

As the years passed, I took my eyesight for granted but then started to notice that one eye seemed to be regressing a bit.  Not badly, but I noticed that the vision in my right eye was not as good as it used to be.  And don't get me started about dry eyes - apparently the combination of laser surgery and peri-menopause is fertile ground for dry eyes.  My annual visits to the optometrist confirmed that my vision was slightly worse in that eye, but nothing to be concerned about.  The other problems with my vision were just due to aging (sigh!) and easily fixed with reading glasses.

But last year was the kicker.  If you ever want to feel old, just sit there while your optometrist says, "Wow, you have a cataract."  Wow?  Why don't you just hit me with a cane, put me in Depends, blue rinse my hair and shove sensible shoes onto my feet?  Apparently, despite my protestations, I am not too young for a cataract, and he listed all the people in their teen's, 20's and 30's that he has seen with cataracts to prove it.  I think the look of horror on my face scared him, and he was desperately trying to make me feel better.  Yeah, buddy, that didn't help, but thanks for trying.

My dear little cataract quietly grew bigger over the year (sometimes they don't get bigger or do so slowly) to the point that my right eye is barely legal for driving, and the glare that I get drives me nuts.  I can't count how many times I have gone to clean my reading glasses or sunglasses on the right lens, only to discover it's me, not the glasses.   Finally fed up, I booked my appointment with the specialist.

And here we are.  Today is the first day I have woken up with a fake body part.  I'm hoping for, and expect, a smooth recovery.  The surgeon said that I have to careful with lifting anything heavy or being in dirty environments (I heard that as any type of cleaning...) for a few weeks. 

I have told my ever-suffering husband that the recovery is 6 months....shhhh!
Here's to ageing, betrayal of body parts and generally breaking down.  At the end of the day, I can't complain, if you are going to have something go wrong, it's a pretty easy one to get fixed.  I just hope I can't see what a crappy job I've been doing with my housework now.  Ignorance was bliss.

I can see clearly now my lens is gone.

I can see all dogs laying in my way.

Gone is the cloudy lens that made me blind.

It's gonna be a bright (bright)

Bright (bright) non-glaring day.

(original lyrics for I Can See Clearly Now by Jimmy Cliff)