This week marks a year since my LASIK surgery. It really was life-changing, but it’s amazing how seldom I think of my years wearing glasses and contacts.
I had terrible vision my whole life. I got glasses in second grade. I think before then, I thought everyone had as hard of a time seeing the chalkboard as I did. By third grade, I was wearing them full time. By that point, without my glasses, I could not distinguish faces that were more than eight inches away. I most certainly couldn’t read anything. My vision mostly stayed that way for 15 years, getting only incrementally worse with annual prescription changes. Around middle school we discovered I had an astigmatism, which wasn’t that big of a deal because so did my mom. And to this day I have no idea what it means.
The biggest pain was during the summer, when I couldn’t really see while I was swimming. I had a humongous alarm clock with 6″ high numbers. I actually still have it because it is my favorite EVER, but I symbolically replaced it with a tiny-numbered version after I got my eyes fixed. My mom also had terrible eyes and we went to the eye doctor every six months.
In third grade, I was riding my bike along a semi-busy road with my mom’s best friend and her daughter. A car was coming behind us, and I think I concentrated too hard on keeping my front tire lined up with the white line on the side of the road. I fell, and my glasses shattered, cutting me around the left eye and bruising and swelling it shut. Luckily my eye wasn’t injured but it was the gnarliest I have ever looked (and ever hope to look!).
My dad and I went whitewater rafting on the French Broad River when I was in fifth grade. At the last minute he kind of panicked about my glasses, and I decided to zip them safely in my windbreaker pocket. Luckily, you don’t need to see a whole lot of detail to follow the guides instructions and use your paddle. I was more comfortable with my precious glasses safely tucked away, but once we finished my dad felt awful that I hadn’t been able to get the full experience without my glasses. I guess he saw the rafting company’s photo of our boat, with me staring unfocused at his back. But truly, I did enjoy that trip and would have been worried about my glasses (while I wasn’t thrown from the raft, I did fall into it, which is more dangerous).
In ninth grade, my mom tried to get me to get contacts. When she was in high school she was desperate to get out of glasses and wore hard lenses, which takes serious dedication. I was able to wear soft lenses, but I still wasn’t interested. Our opthamologist warned Mom that if I wasn’t ready, it wasn’t going to work. I remember tears in the back room of his office as I tried to insert and then remove several types of lenses. They gave me a trial pair to take home, which of course weren’t exactly tuned to my prescription. So for all of this hassle and drama, I couldn’t even see as well as with my glasses. I quit the contacts.
By midway through my tenth-grade year, I was ready to give it another go. As the doctor predicted, this time was much smoother because I was determined. I don’t remember if it was weird going back to school without glasses, but I do remember wearing a lens all through Biology one day while my eye teared up, and realizing afterwards that I had pinched the middle out of the lens when had I picked it up out of my case that morning, so essentially I was looking through the hole in the lens. After that I learned the lesson to always bring my glasses with me just in case.
Overall I enjoyed my contacts because I looked more grown up without glasses. But I was never truly comfortable in them, so I always took them out at night. I could never have been one of those people who left their lenses in day and night and never changed or rinsed them. My mom and I used to have a saying that when you got home at night, it was hard to decide whether to take off the contacts or the bra first. The mall air would always dry them out. Once I started driving, I was especially vigilant about carrying my glasses in case I was out late (the longer I wore my contacts, the more tired my eyes felt).
During my freshman year of college, I lost my glasses (in their case) somewhere between my dorm room and Train’s. I went about two months without them, meaning when I took my contacts out at night, I couldn’t read or watch TV. It was awful…I would want to keep my contacts in as long as possible but it was miserable. In April my mom came to visit for a sorority dinner and I mentioned I had lost my glasses. I thought she’d be mad (hell I was mad at myself!), but she was all “poor baby” and we went to the one-hour place in the mall the next day.
That year (2000) my mom got LASIK. I was apprehensive about it…it seemed really risky. She had it done on a Thursday night, and after a panicked phone call with my dad (he was sure she was going to rub her eyes and blind herself), I went home to visit for the weekend. We made her wear clear shop glasses to avoid touching her eyes. But overall she was ecstatic at her decision and freedom. Even now at 50, she only wears reading glasses (which she will remind you are only about $6 and you can buy them anywhere).
I learned that when I traveled I should always bring a spare pair of contacts (I wore 2-week disposables). One weekend in the summer, on my way up to visit Train at his parents’, I put in my contacts after filling my car with gas. The next day I was in the emergency room for a scratched cornea.
Once I began working, and commuting on the train, I would wear my glasses in to work and change into contacts at my desk. That way I could sleep on the train and still wake up comfortable. I was never big on eye drops so I tried to avoid napping in my contacts for anything. There were a few days I forgot my contacts and had to wear my glasses at work, which wasn’t a huge deal but I didn’t see as well, especially at the computer.
When we went out to visit my in-laws’, which was about an hour drive, I would always bring my glasses with me in case we stayed late. Wearing my contacts at night still made my eyes tired and I often would drive home so I was more comfortable in my glasses.
I was a huge fan of Newlyweds and I watched Jessica and Cacee get their eyes done in 2004. It was hilarious, especially when they went out to eat afterwards. I began to warm up to the idea…if Jessica Simpson could do it, surely I could. Although she did have a limo to take her.
I wasn’t really concerned with my contacts during labor when Sherman was born. My mom had told me stories of falling asleep after I was born and having to pry her eyes open because she had left her contacts in. I figured it would all depend on what time of day it was, and if I wore my glasses, no big deal. I don’t remember taking my contacts out but in photos from the beginning of labor, I had no glasses, and in the photos holding Sherman I was wearing my glasses.
Later that summer, Janet decided to get her eyes lasered. In all the years since my mom had had LASIK, I had just assumed that I was still too young and my eyes still changing. My contacts and glasses had not been that much of a hassle. But now with a baby waking me up in the middle of the night and grabbing at my glasses, it just got to be too much. Janet’s decision was like an epiphany. With all of the stuff I had to remember to take with me for Sherman, if I was going to forget something - or just be lazy and leave it behind - it was going to be my own stuff, and I was sick of toting contact solution, glasses, and cases everywhere. TIME FOR A CHANGE.
I decided to wait until the new year to begin the process. We loaded up our pre-tax health spending account so that we could use it to pay off a chunk of the surgery. I went for a consultation in January, and was able to schedule my surgery during my parents’ February visit.
I have always said the two worst things about LASIK were (a) paying for it and (b) wearing my glasses for 6 weeks before surgery. I didn’t see as well with my glasses so it took some getting used to. Luckily, if I ever need “enhancements”, I won’t have to do either of those things again.
The day before my surgery, on Valentine’s Day, in the middle of the closest thing we get to a blizzard in Virginia, my father-in-law had a liver transplant. Train and his siblings spent a few days in Charlottesville at UVA to be with their mother. Train came home on the 14th so that he could take me for surgery. It was a rough few days for him.
Sitting in an exam room waiting for my noon surgery, I teasingly asked Train if he would ever have LASIK if he needed it. He said hell no, he would never have anyone mess with his eyes because he’d “rather be half blind than totally blind”. I’m glad he kept this opinion to himself until I had no opportunity to back out. I took my valium and we all know how that turned out.
The surgery itself doesn’t take long, but setting up the machines and preparing everything is tedious. The room was cold. My eye was clamped open, and I remember the doctor telling me very sweetly that my eyelid would “give” before the metal clamp did, so I needed to just calm down and stop fighting it. There is a period during surgery where the vision in your eye is completely gone, and you just see black. It was freaky, but kind of cool. It didn’t hurt at all, it was just hard to keep still and look straight ahead. I imagine if I had a sedative that worked better for me, it wouldn’t have been so difficult.
Within a few minutes I was in a dark exam room getting my eyes checked. Things were kind of goopy, like my eyes were covered in vaseline, but I could tell that I could actually see. I was overwhelmed with emotion and drugs and I tearfully thanked the doctor.
The ride home in the snow and sunlight was rough, and as soon as we got home Train covered our bedroom windows with thick blankets. I’m not going to lie, I was in mild pain, and not sedated. My instructions were to sleep for several hours before beginning a very specific eyedrop regimen. I remember waking up every half hour or so to sit up, barely open my eyelid, pull off the eye shield, and let tears drain out.
I had soup in a dark kitchen and went back to bed for the night. The next morning I felt much better. My eyes were sore and bloodshot but I just couldn’t believe that I could see. I reached for my glasses in the morning and tried to adjust them on my face during the day. I slept in eye shields for about a week. Not allowed to touch my eyes for a few weeks. A ton of eyedrops, one that made everything yellow for a second and tasted funny when it somehow reached my throat from my eye. A visit to the eye doctor 24 hours and one week after surgery, then follow-ups at 3, 6, and 12 months post surgery.
After all of those years of glasses and contacts, it is amazing how quickly I got used to being able to see any time, any where. I packed up all of my cases and solution and sent them to Kat. I proudly placed all of my old glasses in the Lions donations box at the opthamologist’s. My friend at work, whose boyfriend had said LASIK changed his life, was confused that I didn’t make a bigger deal of it. But it seemed so natural to be able to see, I kept forgetting about all of those years when I couldn’t.
I haven’t had any problems, and I totally psyched that I don’t have to worry about any of those glasses/contacts issues with this pregnancy, delivery, and newborn stage. I have had some pretty bad eye dryness due to the pregnancy hormones, but all I need are some drugstore eyedrops.
It was definitely a wonderful decision. I’m sure I would have done it eventually, but if it hadn’t been for Janet I wouldn’t have bitten the bullet when I did. I have learned a lot of things from the ladies’ whose blogs I read, tried new things, been inspired about different things. But this definitely was the most life-changing. Happy Valentines Day, Janet, and here’s to “high definition eyeballs”!
