To See...

Like many adolescents, my vision began a slow decline in my pre-teens or early teens. I'm not sure when exactly. Youth.

When I was 19 and 20, I worked at a Lenscrafters as a lab tech. I knew all about vision and glasses and curvature of lenses and things like that. Because it happened while I worked there, I know exactly when my left eye took a sudden and extreme turn for the worse. Between one year and the next, the prescription in my left eye more than doubled. My right eye continued its slow decline.

That year, when I put on my new Lenscrafters glasses with the full prescription for both eyes, I couldn't see at all. If I closed one eye, I could see independently out of either one perfectly. Open both eyes -- double vision.

My left eye had become so much worse than my right eye that my brain could not compensate for the different curvature of the prescription lenses. It happens sometimes. The doc gave me a lower prescription in my left eye. Right eye, perfect vision. Left eye, blurry vision. Both eyes, and I could see just fine. My brain was able to compensate for blurriness better than for lens curvature differences.

I haven't managed a full prescription in my left eye since.

Which means I haven't seen clearly out of my left eye in 14 years. My entire adult life.

About ten years ago my sister got Lasik. She has told me periodically since then that it is the best money she's ever spent. I've been waiting to have money to get Lasik since then. Between living in intentional poverty (see Tangled Hair in the Windy City) and then grad school, that's never happened before. But now here we are-- fully employed people. School debts paid off.

Today is Tuesday. I'm going in for the consultation and pre-op on Thursday. I'm going in for Lasik on Friday. I cannot justly express the excitement and anticipation that is coursing through my veins and heart and stomach and brains and lungs and every other molecule of my body that might have some physiological reaction one could reasonably label as excitement. All of it. I feel all of it. Pretty much constantly. I'm going to see clearly for the first time since the 1990's. For the first time in this millennium.

Am I nervous about Lasik? Not at all. Even if they tell me I have to do one of those other procedures that hurts more and takes longer to heal... don't care. There is no limit to what I am willing to do for this. I want TO SEE.

What I am nervous about is that during the consultation/pre-op, what if they tell me I am not a candidate for some reason? I think I will lose it entirely. If that happens, don't expect to see me too soon. I'll be on a drunken bender. Or possibly in jail for having torn apart the eye-surgeon's office after he gave me the bad news. Keep your eye on the news Thursday afternoon-- that's when the fireworks would happen. If you don't see any headlines, "Climate Change Researcher Flips Out" or "Blind Rage--I See What You Did There," then we're cool. I'll be drumming my fingers in barely concealed excited anticipation.

Fourteen years. My entire adult life. This millennium. When I think about seeing clearly -- out of both eyes -- in just a few days, I get all weepy. I just want to cry from joy. I think after it's confirmed, or maybe after it happens, I really will cry. Just let the waterworks come. You know me, I gotta see it to believe it. But oh man, when I see it, it's gonna be some celebration times.