A Temporary Disruption in Activities

Back in the fall of 2024, as I was heading in to the terminal leave phase of my upcoming retirement, I had my yearly visit to my eye doctor, at which we discussed the progress of my cataracts.  I had started to notice some annoying visual effects in my left eye, especially when using computer monitors.  These were due, my eye doctor informed me, to the way the cataract in my left eye was refracting the light coming in to my eye.  We updated my prescription, and I began my terminal leave.  One of the regular activities that I restarted was practicing piano, but the first time I played after getting my new glasses I had trouble focusing the notes on the music page.  I have glasses just for playing piano, which have not been updated for a few years, and when I alternated which eye I looked through I realized that the left eye, and the annoying visual effects, was the culprit, so I put a cardboard patch over that lens and proceeded with my practice.  I then spent the next few days training my brain to ignore the visual input from my left eye, which has been my dominant eye all my life.  The reprogramming was successful, but it did take a good deal of brain processing power to maintain, leaving me fatigued by early evening.

Over the course of the next year I began to notice that I needed more light when I was knitting.  I started using my Lumos neck light more and more often in order to see my stitches, and I was still dealing with mental fatigue and eye strain, which at times resulted in headaches.  When I went back for my annual visit to the eye doctor last fall, we again discussed my cataracts, and she asked if I had noticed needing more light.  Ha!  It turns out that in addition to the yellowing of my lens, I also was getting fogging of my lens and, even though my vision could still be corrected, we decided that with the degradation in the quality of life I should go ahead and get cataract surgery.  We started with the left eye, as that was the worst, and she suggested that the right eye could wait, even another year.  So at the end of October I went to an ophthalmologist and was evaluated for cataract surgery.  Given that all my life my left eye has been far-sighted and my right eye has been near-sighted, we decided that mono-vision would work well for me.  This past Thursday I had the cataract surgery on my left eye, with an upgraded lens that also fixed my astigmatism.  I love my new left eye, the visual acuity is amazing.  So when I went in for the follow-up appointment on Friday we scheduled the right eye for December 18th.  So, I’m getting new eyes for Christmas.

I have not worn my glasses since the surgery, as my right eye is adequate, although not perfect, for seeing near field.  I also have an astigmatism in my right eye, which is worse than the one that was in my left, but it is mostly noticeable when looking at a distance.  The best part about the getting my left eye fixed is the increase in my mental energy and the fact that I no longer get fatigued in early evening (falling asleep while watching television at 0830 in the evening kind of sucks).  However, given the current limitations of my right eye, some knitting projects are easier to work on than others - small needles and dark yarn are a little bit of a challenge, so I will be focusing on different projects until I get my right eye fixed.  By early next year everything should be all healed up and I can go back to my eye doctor and see what I might need in the way of glasses.  In the meantime I have multiple eyedrops to put in my eye multiple times a day, for which I created a tracking spreadsheet, and in two weeks I will have two eyes to deal with, but I’ve already made up the spreadsheet for my right eye (easy enough to do, I just had to change the dates).  My physical activity is also a bit curtailed until everything is healed up - I don’t want to screw up the surgery and have to go back and get it redone.  I am super-excited about getting new eyes, and not having to wear glasses all the time is a novel experience, after 50 years, that I’m still getting used to.  The process is pretty disruptive, what with all the appointments and the eye drops and the physical activity limitations, but this way I will get it all done and dusted, and after seeing what a new lens has done for my distance vision, I am looking forward to seeing what it will do for my near vision.