I’m back, and better…

            I’m back. I had cataract surgery this spring, and I’m willing to call it a medical milestone. Not a Hail Mary type of surgery, but one done for millions. Yet, to me, and to many like me, a transformation.

            Imagine having yellowed vaseline smeared generously on both the lenses of your glasses. That’s how I’ve been. But, you say, you’re an artist, so how can you have allowed the situation to get so bad without hammering on your ophthalmologist’s door demanding help? Think human nature, fear, and all the things we’re told will inevitably get worse as we age. Who wants to line up for surgery in a time of COVID to have one’s eyeballs tampered with? Especially when you think that maybe impaired vision is better than no vision, and there’s no guarantee for any surgery’s success? I had the impression that I’d never have fully correctable vision again, surgery or no surgery.

            In my early sixties I’m younger than the average to have this done, and I think my myopia made my cataracts affect me more than a person who had less distortion. I also wonder about a childhood under the African sun. I didn’t know just how blind I had become. I wasn’t driving anyway, so that wasn’t an issue. True, I had in the past few years taken to telling people that if I seemed to be rude to them in public it was because I couldn’t see them. COVID restrictions of course forced me to wait until the vision loss was even more extreme.

            I would say that the most painful part of my surgical experience was the pre-op COVID nasopharyngeal test which was performed by a lovely young nurse trained by Torquemada. She apologized afterwards while I sneezed and tears bled over my eyelid on the sampled side. I was amazed there was no real blood from her swab poking about in what felt like my brain.

            I also hated getting up so early while the world, in March, was still dark and cold and it seemed lonely being one of the first patients of the morning at the surgical center. At least, I thought, I get to sleep through this. I let the nurses poke about while they checked everything, and then checked it again, cheerful and unfazed. Then they slipped me into sleep. After an hour or so of vague nothing, and a few images of lights and voices in the background, I woke up and they let me go home. Outdoors was painfully bright– someone in the process should apparently have told me to bring my dark glasses, but it was a very minor slip up.

            It’s a slow recovery, not because it’s painful but because you are reminded all the time of the strictures until you heal– six weeks of multiple times a day eyedrops and about two weeks of never bending over, no water on the side of the face most recently done, no heavy exercise (at heart I am a farmer, so that’s hard….) Just remember that the actual incision is tiny, and so long as you use caution and patience, the odds are tremendously in your favor. But you are told not to sneeze and not to vomit– both of which are not, perhaps the most controllable of events! Having been told about the sneeze caution, I started on over the counter antihistamine pills two weeks previous.

            Another reason I found this down time perplexing, was that I was even blinder in the two weeks after the first surgery because I really am profoundly myopic without correcting lenses. If one isn’t extremely myopic I think the process would feel shorter, and the ability to do normal things would be there. I thought about the options for what lenses the surgeon would implant and selected the simplest, a monofocal set of lenses that would improve but maintain my myopia. Multifocal lenses are more complicated, and do not do as well in low-light circumstances, according to my reading on the subject. I love low-light circumstances, especially for painting, so that was a consideration. I also preferred the idea of continuing to wear glasses, because I’m used to the protection they lend, especially as I am a person who does lots of dirty work in my garden. So I had my lenses improve my vision from nearly minus eight to a mere minus 1.75 and minus 3, planning on spectacles to take care of my distance vision.

            Two weeks after the second eye surgery, I had an appointment with my ophthalmologist, who gave me my temporary prescription. I went immediately to one of the shops that specializes in same-day production, and I spoke briefly to a young man, telling him I wanted frames similar to the old ones I showed him. Little did he know what a blur he was to me! But he showed me an example that was a close match, and started to hand me a basket so I could collect an assortment of those I liked. I said, “No, thanks, I’ll take these.”

            He faltered, truly taken aback.

            “What? You can’t do that…” he said. “No one looks at only one frame.”

            “But I do,” I said. “I’ve only had one of my COVID vaccinations and I want to be as fast as possible in here, no insult intended. These glasses will be temporary, because the post-cataract surgery sight hasn’t settled yet, and I want to get them and go, as efficiently as possible.”

            And so it was.

            Now I can see ALL THE THINGS! I can see the fur on the cat sitting in my lap with perfect detail, and I can count the Coulter pines on the ridge line over Santa Barbara, and I can trace the edges on all the trees and buildings and slopes between. I could blather for hours about how marvelous this is! There are so many details, the shadows of pebbles and the blades of grass, and the sharp deliberate outlines of mountains surging against the thick blue horizon. I am drunk with detail and the gorgeousness of light.

            If you are worried about having your own cataract surgery, I can tell you I worried about mine too. I memorized just about everything that might go wrong. But I also realized after the first eye went so well, that even if the second surgery was a disaster, I was already so much better off than before.

            A fortunate person is born to see, but to get the chance to be born twice…no wonder I must sound drunk.