I began wearing glasses when I was six or seven years old. As happens with many children, I wasn't seeing the blackboard in my classroom. In particular, in arithmetic classes, I was having a particular problem. It wasn't that my answers were wrong (my math anxiety that would cause wrong answers was a few years away), but that the questions were. Sister Ursula, I'm thinking it was, was perspicacious enough to call my father (always the primary contact for school matters) to suggest his one and only had an eye problem. You'd think that I would have noticed I saw everything in shades of foggy, but when you don't know how your sense is supposed to be, you are not aware of a deficit.
So at a tender age, I began to wear glasses. Now in those days, the lenses in glasses for someone with approximately 20/600 vision, were coke bottles. They just had to be think to do whatever that refraction thing was (I think) to make seeing possible. Thus, however beautiful I thought the frames were, once they were fitted with the lenses, I certainly looked like Mr. Magoo.
I suppose it was tolerable enough when all I had to consider was going to school, doing my homework, and playing "Red Light, Green Light" in and around our tenement courtyard (tenement means, a multi-family building of any sort, where there are separate apartments; lately of course that word has taken on a negative connotation alas). But then I was in high school, an all girls high school to be sure, but one that shared dances with the local boys' schools, like Mt. St. Michael.
I wasn't pretty, at least in my mind, and glasses, however necessary, added to my sense of futility about having any boy ask me to dance. So at the very first one I attended in Freshman year, I decided that the thing to do was to ditch the glasses, hide them under the bleachers, and ask my friends if a guy who approached me met with their approval, and thus, mine. The fact that the lighting was so low combined with my serious myopia mean that not only could I not tell what the approaching boy might look like but I was lucky I could make out if they had any features at all.
I squinted and sweated in anxiety through that first dance. When it concluded, I rummaged under the bleachers for my specs, and promptly stepped on them. Arriving at home, I cried as I begged to be allowed to try contact lenses. I am not sure whether it was my sincerity or my persistence (I tended to be an obedient and unobstructive child so if I was insistent, my parents probably felt it was serious enough to warrant consideration). Contact lenses were no inexpensive commitment in the 1960s. They weren't quite as massive as the glass ones my uncle Tony actually had (I guess for driving his bus, though I really don't know come to think of it), and they were hard plastic, and the word was that some people couldn't get used to them. I was 14 so my parents were skeptical. Me? I was highly motivated.
My father took me to the offices of Lewis Schachne, an opthomologist in chic Manhattan, the first place I ever saw the Magazine "Highlights for Children". After the examination, both dad and the doctor pointed out that it would take several weeks to get used to the contacts, if I could. I had to work up to wearing them, an hour a day, then two, and so on. Although I can be impatient about many things, when I know that I really have to do something, or want to do something, I will commit with fervor.
And so I did. I wore hard contact lenses for the next eight years. This was, I suppose, the first miracle of clarity. Yeah, it could be difficult at times, particularly if anything, dust, a hair, anything, got under the lens. This would cause all sorts of eye gyrations, and tears as the eye tried to get rid of the irritant. I got good enough on train rides and bus rides on the No. 1 bus on the Grand Concourse in popping out the lens (lots of wearers can relate to this), somehow removing the obstruction and popping it back in. Not particularly hygienic to be sure, but in the days before warnings on everything, worrier though I was about most everything, this I did not worry about. I ultimately got to a point where, again not recommended, that I could wear the lenses all day and into the night. Most people would never see me with glasses. I was liberated!
But when I was in college, there was a hitch. One night I came home, popped out the lenses and my eyes became a painful waterworks. Dad and I went to the Emergency Room at Montefiore Hospital, but by the time they got to us, hours later, my eyes were no longer watering or hurting.
I was told that I had corneal abrasions. This apparently was a consequence for long time hard contact lens wearers, and I could not wear them for more than a few hours a day, if that. Although by this time, soft contact lenses were in use, they had not yet become workable on someone with an astigmatism, so I was out of luck. Fortunately, now it was the 70s, and aviator glasses were in, lenses were a little less think, and with a tint, I could get away with it. Anyway, the 70s were not a fashion period, so I blended in quite nicely with my long hair. I was a little bit Gloria Steinman, in look. Well, that's what I told myself
Once I was in law school, soft lenses became possible, and I was again, at least for 17 hours of the day, without glasses. I got my Hamill hair cut, finished school, and moved to California.
Time warp. Thirty something years. There have been all kinds of surgical improvements for eyesight, but they are not terribly reliable, and even if they were, soft contacts had served me well, but I was developing cataracts. My optometrist suggested that I didn't have to wait until I was in my 80s to have them repaired, they were causing weird coronas on lights, and it was getting annoying to drive at night for the glare of the headlights of other cars. And, she said, by the way, that will be covered by your insurance so, if you want to pay to have your myopia repaired at the same time, that's something you might want to consider.
"You mean," I thought, "not have to worry about where my glasses were in case of fire, earthquake or other natural disaster?" "You mean, being able to wake up in the morning and not have everything look like it had thick gauze on it?"
Oh, yes, there were people who said, "Whoa now, these things don't always work." But once again, I was highly motivated. I had been a child, a young woman, a middle aged woman, and now an "ahem" woman of a certain age, with lousy vision, but I could have better vision now, at this late stage, then I ever had in my whole life.
And so, I did it. To see the world was like seeing a restored Renaissance painting, the colors vibrant in a way that no contact lens had ever made possible. With contact lenses I never could easily see signs until I was up close to them. Now I could see blocks away. I remember being amazed at the depth of color of the stained glass in my church. There was perfect visual clarity. An even more astounding miracle, for in 1968, the idea that I would ever have normal sight unaided (I did not have the presbyopia aspect changed; wearing reading glasses never bothered me) for distance, was impossible.
Six years passed since that profound change in my existence. Naturally, I became a little nonchalant about it, taking having regular sight for granted, so much so, that though I noticed things didn't seem so vibrant anymore, particularly in my left eye, I assumed that it was just that the novelty had worn off. I hadn't been back to my regular optometrist, as I no longer work and go downtown where the optometrist was (in the building in which I worked), and because except for off the rack reading glasses, I saw fine. I breezed through my reading test at the DMV more than a year ago.
Then I noticed in reading, one eye seemed really hazy, and I wondered if cataracts grow back. So I went on line, and saw that no, they don't grow back, but there is this thing that is loosely called a "second cataract". I decided, a rarity for me, maybe because I was highly motivated, not to overthink it, and just make an appointment with my old surgeon's office, Assil Eye Institute in Beverly Hills.
All was well, except (and if anyone is interested what gets cloudy is explained on the net) I needed my implanted lens polished. This is considered a common "complication" of cataract surgery I have since read. But if this is the only complication I ever have medically, I wouldn't complain. Now, I remembered that when I wore lenses, they would get dirty, and cloudy, but of course then I could pop them out, clean them and that would be that. These post cataract, post myopia repair eyes didn't allow for that. I didn't ask how they would be polished if they were attached to my eye. I'd wait and find out when I got there, if that indeed was the problem.
It is called a laser capsulotomy. Yes, it is done with a laser. Dr. Assil said, just as he finished the two or three minute procedure that though I thought I was seeing mighty fine (not his words) with my right eye, in fact, I would now notice that it was the left eye that was clear and the right a bit cloudy.
When I went outside, I remembered what I had felt when I had the original surgery. I had not realized that I had actually lost the vibrancy, the definition of of sky, and water, and object, and faces. And now I can't wait for the right eye to be done, in a few weeks.
A third miracle!
There is so much I hate about our technological world. I mean, a lot. But these things that can be done for teeth (I have implants and I tell you they are pretty amazing too), for eyes, for ears, for other parts of the body, that are purely wonders.
I so often look at the world (figuratively) with clouded eyes. But this experience has me seeing it with enormous gratefulness. To man, and God, both.
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