Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Behind every cloud

I had planned on doing a picture post but DH is traveling so I decided to veg out last night, watch a little TV and stay up a bit late reading an awesome book. It's the latest Anne Bishop if anyone is interested.

We had a wonderful weekend with very minor temper tantrums by Cameron. Either we are getting better at managing (really distracting) her or she's just gearing up for another big one. Lots of errands were run and DH had his baseball draft. This Sunday is the start of me being a baseball widow for the next 8 months. Perhaps a month less if the Yankees don't make it to the post season. Hey, a wife can dream! DH finally broke down and bought a new flat screen TV for his office and a new couch. The TV is already in place and the couch should be delivered in the next week or so. That means I can have the main TV all to myself!

The one errand we didn't accomplish was to pick out new glasses for me. 7 years ago I got laser eye surgery. It was absolutely the best thing I ever did. I was able to pay for it with pre-tax dollars and loved being able to see in the shower or the clock when I rolled over. I had, to put it mildly, very poor eyesight. My glasses were coke bottles so I primarily wore contacts. About a year before the surgery the contacts started to really bother my eyes if I had them in for longer than a few hours. Faced between scheduling an expensive procedure and wearing my coke bottle classes, I decided to go with the surgery.

I had a feeling that my eyesight wasn't 20/20 any more. But I haven't been to the eye doctor since the last eye surgery follow up. I do have some problems driving at night. I get a halo effect from lights. But DH usually drives so it wasn't that big of a deal. I scheduled my appointment for this huge facility right down the road.

The nurse took me back through a warren of corridors (I think this place could have seen 100 patients at one time!) and began administering my eye test. Are they really nurses? Perhaps eye technicians? Anyway, she immediately began clicking her tongue when I couldn't read below the second line. I said, "These letters are really small. I bet most people can't read them." She responded, "Yes they can." Crap. I knew that this wasn't going to be a good appointment. After scaring me she dilated my eyes and then the doctor came in. He was super nice and his wife was also an eye doctor (Harvard). He also told me that his daughter was going to Harvard in the fall. For what, you may ask? Nuclear physics. Yikes. Smart girl.

The doctor told me that my eyes weren't too bad but my left one was worse than my right which was why I couldn't see well at night. "It's actually a good thing," he told me seriously, "That means in a few years when you are in your 40s and you start to become far sighted you won't need reading glasses." Gee, thanks. I happen to only be in my early thirties, dude. I had to write my birth date down a million times on the forms I filled out. Do the math!

It turns out that I will only need glasses for driving at night which is great. I don't plan on wearing them very often because I remember distinctly when I was 8 and got glasses for the first time. After about a week once I took them off everything was blurry. I don't plan on going through that again. And the silver lining is that despite failing eyesight today apparently I will not require reading glasses in ten years when I'm in my forties.

Has anyone else regressed from their eye surgery? Contemplating getting it?

2 comments:

WorkingMom said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
WorkingMom said...

Isn't it nice to not have to share the remote?

As far as your question, I qualify as legally blind without my contacts, which thankfully I can still wear! I had thought about the surgery at one point, but my eyes never stayed the same long enough to qualify. With my mom now having a potentially inherited eye condition that could require a corneal transplant in the future, I don't think it will ever be an option for me. As long as the contacts work, I'm okay.