I’d worn glasses for most of my life. Eventually, I got sick of it and stopped (sorta). This is how it happened.
My history with glasses.
I’m told that I got my first pair of glasses just before my third birthday. While I don’t remember the event, I do remember going later and seeing eye-charts that had silhouettes of shapes instead of letters for kids who hadn’t yet been taught the alphabet. I’m also told that I was tested at such an early age because my right eye sucked so bad that it became ‘lazy’. This means that the brain stopped using any information that came from that eye and the iris/pupil thing just fell into the corner of my eye.
This doesn’t mean that my left eye was any great shakes or anything, it just didn’t suck as much as my right eye. Both eyes had astigmatism. This means that they’re shaped like footballs instead of basketballs. The upshot is that only lines in one direction are ever focused, all other lines are blurred.
Both eyes were also nearsighted. This means that the image from the eyeball’s lens is focused on a point in front of the retina instead of exactly on the retina.
I’ve never had contact lenses (too much work and sticking fingers in my eyes) and had resigned myself to always wearing glasses.
To add insult to injury, when I became 39, both eyes developed presbyopia. This is caused by the lens losing its ability to flex and focus on close objects. My optometrist assures me that this is because I’m getting older. (Thanks). In fact, the ‘presby’ part of the name is from the Greek word ‘presbys’ which means ‘old person’. (Unlike Dave Barry, I am not making this up). The problem is that corrective lenses that fix presbyopia also wreck your distance vision. You can see far away or nearby, but not both. To get around this problem, I started getting bifocals or progressive lenses in my glasses. These allow you to look far away in one part of the lens, (usually the top) and nearby in another part of the lens (usually the bottom).
Will laser beams solve the problem?
Around two years ago, I figured that corrective eye surgery was getting cheaper so I took a look at it. They claimed that my astigmatism and nearsightedness could be fixed.
They also claimed that they could fix the presbyopia by shaping one eye for reading and the other for looking far away. This solution didn’t seem ready for prime time. It also seemed like it would be viewed in history in the same way that we view ‘bleeding’.
The short answer is that I’d still need reading glasses after the surgery. At the time, I figured that I was only going to have surgery if I could get rid of glasses, not just get a different pair.
Since then, the presbyopia got worse. I was spending a lot of time hurting my neck from bending my head back far enough to read what was on the computer’s monitor. I wound up juggling 2 pairs of glasses, regular bifocals for walking around and reading glasses for using the computer. After juggling glasses for a year, I was ready for the surgery.
Is it free?
Eyeball slicing surgery isn’t free. It also isn’t covered by my employer’s medical plan. The only break I could get was that I could use pre-tax dollars from a “flexible spending plan” to pay for it. (Maybe. I’m starting to hear weasel words about filling out more forms)
The procedure.
On the day of the surgery, they told me to bring someone to drive me home. Not because I wouldn’t be able to see but because I’d be out of my mind on valium. I got there with my wife at 15:00. They gave me some valium and explained what would be happening. The main point was that they didn’t want me to be surprised at any point in the procedure. During this chat, they mentioned that during the eye shaping procedure, I’d smell something like ‘burning hair’ and that I shouldn’t be worried because it was perfectly normal. I wasn’t consciously feeling any valium effects at this point, but it must have been doing something. I didn’t jump up and shout “My God woman, that isn’t hair! You’re burning my eyeballs!” which is something that I’d’ve probably said if I wasn’t on valium at the time.
After talking and sitting and waiting, it was time to go to the eyeball slicing room. My wife was invited to go to the viewing room. She confirmed that they couldn’t make her go, so she went to some other waiting room.
The eyeball slicing room.
In the eyeball slicing room, there were two couches, each with their own refrigerator-sized cabinets hanging over them. I was directed to the one on my right. this machine would cut the flaps over my eyes.
As I lay on the couch, an assistant of some kind would make reassuring noises and try to distract me. (“How about them Mets” or something). Since the valium was kicking in pretty well by then, I responded with “argle fargle” or words to that effect. They also put drops in my eyes so that I wouldn’t feel anything.
They put clips in my eyelids to keep them open. (Remember Alex watching movies in “A Clockwork Orange”) Then the machine slowly lowered and put pressure on my head and eyes to stop them from wandering around.
(I’d always wondered about what happens if someone drops a metal tray of equipment during the procedure. Would my eye dart to the side, slicing the whole thing wide open with eyeball jelly splattering on the ceiling? With my head and eyes clamped like they were, that wasn’t goung to happen).
As the pressure increased, my vision faded to black except for a couple of green and red laser-looking points. This was eye-slicing time. After 20 seconds of new but not-really-alarming noises, the machine backed away. The fade-to-black thing reversed and everything was more blurred that usual. I was asked to move to the next couch and was helped over.
This was the eyeball-shaping couch. More clamping, fading and now – burning hair smell. The valium was really working hard by now so my response was “Duuuuude. burning eyeball! Giggle!”
Twenty seconds later, I was told to go home. I was also to sleep as much as I could because A) I wasn’t allowed to watch TV or read or look at a computer until the next morning and B) my eyes were going to hurt like a son of a female dog over the next few hours.
After the procedure
The following day, my wife drove me back for the first checkup. I could have driven but I was pretty sheepish about doing anything without glasses. On the way there, we compared when we were able to read road signs. I needed to be about 10 feet closer than my wife. That was still an improvement over what I could see before with glasses.
My eyes were looked at and tested. Everything looked good (no pun intended, really) After that, we ran out for a) breakfast and b) Walgreen’s for some cheapo $5 glasses so that I could read up close again.
Since the procedure, I have to take eye drops every few hours. At first it was an anti-biotic, a steroid, and artificial tears. I finished off the anti-biotic after a couple of weeks and the steroid a couple of weeks after that. The artificial tears wil be used for 3 months.
Life without glasses (as much)
When I get up in the morning, I still reach for my glasses. Then I remember and put them in my pocket. I was expecting to poke the bridge of my nose to push back phantom glasses but that hasn’t happened. I’m still using glasses for reading and I have to juggle different glasses depending on whether I’m using a monitor, reading a book or reading something in between. I even have some stupid half-height ones so that I can look down at my notebook and up at the whiteboard in class. But my neck isn’t sore anymore.