I Can See! I Can See! Better than Ever

Yesterday I left the office early for an important appointment. I had been waiting months for this day, and at 3 pm, I was seated in a dark office popping two Valium with Cindy by my side. It was time to slice open my eyes with a laser and shave off just enough of my beautiful blue corneas to correct my vision–and Dr Frangie was dressed in purple scrubs down to his shoes ready to go. It was time for LASIK in West Springfield.

The procedure is costly but the results are hard to describe—for the first time this morning I awoke with a clear view of the world, and when I glanced down at a printed email, I read it with ease. It’s been decades of waking up to a fuzzy world, then pushing those plastic lenses into my eyes, and there was a time when I’d have to fumble around for those stupid reading glasses. No more.

I’ve elected to go for mono-vision, which gives the responsibilty of distance viewing to my left eye, and all reading is done by my right eye. I used to have separate contacts for each, now the laser has corrected the way the eyes are curved so they are now as perfectly shaped as when I was born.

My sense when I was lying under that big machine was that I was in the movie “The Matrix.” It was a caleidescope of confusing bright dots, a mash of red, a tiny orb of green, and I heard the four people around me telling me that it was going well, that we were almost done, but I was drugged, and so, barely able to register but aware of their words.

For the next few weeks I’ve got to avoid water in the shower and any urge to scratch or touch my eyes. It’s an easy price to pay, since I’ve thrown away bottles of saline and so many of those little plastic lens cases. And these scratched up old glasses, they’re gone for good too.