I once was blind

Not many people know this but I have been pretty blind for a good many years... okay so maybe lots of people know that, but maybe they didn't know just how bad it was. That 20/20 vision measurement that they have, it goes up to 20/400 and my vision was worse than that... off the chart. Basically that big E... if I didn't know it was an E then I wouldn't be able to tell what it was.

I was pretty content to wear contacts most of the time and glasses when I was at home - although it was always annoying to have to pick my head up off the pillow and hang half way out of bed to be able to see the alarm clock at night. And then I started working nights at a hospital with dry dry air. My eyes wanted to kick my contacts out at about 3 in the morning. So I started wearing my glasses - except that they give me a headache from pushing on my ears and nose and I was always worried that they'd fall off my peanut head at an inopportune moment :(

So I decided to get LASIK. I'm not the best at doing lots of research about things but I am good at picking the right people to get advise from so I asked my sister-in-law, who is the researchy type who she went to and picked that guy... it turns out that he is the best in Houston... so they say, and I'd have to agree.

I'm pretty grossed out by eyeballs - I can't even stand to see conjunctiva. When I had to put eye drops in people's eyes when I was in nursing school it grossed me right out. Poop, blood, vomit, open abdominal cavities, all the stuff that comes out when a person gives birth - none of it grosses me out in the slightest but eyeballs - yish. I think it stems from an experience I had when I was 12. We had to dissect a cow's eyeball in science class. We had to make an incision and then "gently" squeeze the eyeball until the lens came out. When I squeezed the eye the lens totally popped out and it looked like a jelly bean that had the sugary colored coating sucked off - and then the eye was all wrong with goo and liquid and wrongness. Probably if we'd been able to wear latex gloves I'd have been OK but they didn't do stuff like latex gloves for stuff like that back then so I was forever traumatized by the whole thing.

When I asked people who had the surgery about it they all pretty much said "you don't feel anything." I was foolish and believed this. While it's true that painful isn't the word I would use to describe the experience, I would say that it was SUUUUUPPPPPPERRRRRRR UNCOMFORTABLE. First of all, they keep your eye open with a Clock Work Orange type contraption

That's not comfortable, no, not at all. Then they put a suction cup thing on your eye, also uncomfortable. After that you can't see anything, and to be fair, that makes things get better. However, the surgeon would say "look up" "look down" or whatever and I wanted to say "dude, I can't see anything to look at anything" but I was too busy fighting off a panic attack due to the fact that they gave me my Valium 5 minutes before the procedure... I'm thinking I could've used it like 20-30 minutes beforehand but you know - at least I slept most awesomely on the way home and for several hours when I got home. Valium plus no sleep the night before = super duper sleepy.

So today my eyes look like this

When my kids saw me they were like "um, mom, are your eyes going to stay like that?"

I wore my sunglasses all around the grocery store because I didn't want to freak people out. I still got weird looks from wearing my sunglasses inside but I took comfort in the fact that I wasn't the only one. Also, I'm not allowed to wear make-up for a week so nobody better ask me if I'm feeling ok!

So the verdict - it was totally worth it. I can already see well enough to drive and watch TV without glasses and that is such a huge improvement I can't even tell you how happy I am. They told me it will take 3-4 months before my eyes settle into what they will be.