In January 2012, I was told that I have cataracts forming in both eyes.  They were not bad enough to get insurance to pay for LASIC, but might be so in a year or two.  Come back in a year and I might get LASIC in both eyes pretty cheaply.  I have considered, and then chickened out, on vision improvement surgery for decades, and figured now was the time I would have to pull the switch and go ahead.

In the summer of 2012, I started noticing a wierd visual phenomenon.  When I looked at a horizontal line that I knew was straight, it would have a bump in the middle.  I figured it was my developing cataracts, and decided to wait to do anything about it, since we were going to Ecuador for 3 months shortly.

When I was in Ecuador, I realized that my glasses no longer helped. I saw the same blurry image with or without them.  I left the glasses at home for the first time in 30 years, and relied on my “seeing eye Evelyn” for anything far away, or for something like a street sign across the street.

When we got home, I went to an opthamologist, and he said “LASIC won’t do you any good because you have a hole in the center of your retina.”  Oops, that bump in straight lines was me seeing the line pass through the hole and distort.  By this time though, trying to use my left eye made everything look like a funhouse mirror.

My vision had gone from “20/60 correctable to 20/30” a year ago to 20/400 now, non-correctable.  I was told that there was so much scar tissue due to the time since the damage, that the chance of success was only 85%, and that they would consider it a success if my vision doubled — meaning going to 20/200, which is still legally blind… 🙁

I went ahead with the surgery (seeing a knife going for you eye is not something I recommend for the squimish…), which included a recovery period of 7 days during which I was required to be “face down” 24 hours per day.  (Basically they cut the retina around the damaged area, put a gas bubble in the eye, then the face-plant encourages the eye to repair the damage tightly to the back of the eye, with no wrinkles or raised scar regions.)

7 absolutely, stunning, amazingly boring days later…

I went back to the surgeon yesterday. Among other magic, he took another photograph of my retina, and then showed me the comparison.  My left (damaged) eye now looked as good as my right (undamaged) eye. The doctor said that the level of success was amazing and that I would probably get my vision back to what it was a year ago!  It will take about 6 months for my vision to stabilize at that level though.

I’m still nearly blind, have a gas bubble that fills up most of my left-eye vison, must still be face-down 2 hours per day (just enough for a movie on my iPad), can’t drive, and can’t use the computer more than an hour at a time.  But I am ON THE MEND!

I really feared that I had lost vision in that left eye. Though I live my life with a primary mantra of “I refuse to live in fear,” I have to admit that I feared losing that eye.  Looks like all will be well though.  One side effect of this surgery is that it will create a cataract, but since I knew that was coming anyway, I consider that a small price to pay.

I am blind, but this was a success — Blind Success!  🙂