Last Post about My Eyesight (I Hope)

I've learned via Facebook that lots of my friends there have undergone the same cataract/lens-replacement surgery that I recently "enjoyed." I guess I'm not really surprised. As I wrote the other day, the waiting room at the Cleveland Eye Clinic was jammed this past Tuesday when I arrived for surgery on my second (left) eye. It was weird, sitting there, watching all sorts of people walking--tentatively, tentatively (they were "coming down" from the drugs)--out of the building, all of those folks wearing the same brand and style of dark sunglasses that the Eye Clinic had given me a couple of weeks ago following the work on my right eye. The same dark sunglasses I'll be wearing outside until next Tuesday: my one-week requirement.

Anyway, I want to say just this: I see better now than I have since I was in my twenties. Distances are clear and bright and colorful. And reading?  For the past ten years or so, reading has become increasingly difficult for me: blurry print, shadows and ghosts of words. It was driving me mad!

But even with only the right eye cleared up, I was reading far better than I had in a decade. As the second eye has cleared up, post-surgery, it's even better.

Last night we went to Walgreen's, where I picked up a pair of reading glasses (1.5 magnification), and, later, when I settled in to read in bed, I nearly wept when I saw the clarity and stability of the images I was seeing. It was, well, miraculous.

My local optometrist (who handles all my follow-up from the Cleveland Eye Clinic) tells me we will wait a bit to see how it all settles out before we consider the sort of eyeglasses I will need--if any.

But I am so used to glasses (I began wearing them in my early 30s) that I'm already finding it a bit annoying to go find my reading glasses when I want to read something--when I want to work on the computer--etc. Additionally annoying: looking up from such work and seeing a blurry world that clears only when I remove the glasses.

So ... later ... I will probably get bifocals--clear on top, mild reading correction on the bottom. And I will sail into senescence, my sails billowing with gratitude.

And then, of course, Mr. G. Reaper will appear and present me with his orders. Which, at least, I will be able to read clearly. Before I foolishly try to run away ...