Blah (My Journey Between Cataract Surgeries)...

No real theme for this post, except that I'd like to just share where I am. 

Life just doesn't seem to want to let up. Almost two weeks ago my mom had a stroke. The day after that, I had the first of two surgeries on my eyes due to cataracts. The air went out at my house (at a time when I was told to NOT sweat, and I sweat even when it's in the low 70s). For many reasons, I was the only one who could stay with my mom at the hospital, which I did from Sunday until Friday all day, every day. My daughter had a big issue with her dad and I had to help mediate it. 

Yesterday was the first day I had a break. I expected to be able to rest (finally!) and just be a bum all day. 

It didn't work out that way. 

You see, even before the cataracts, I had horrible vision. When I was about six years old and got glasses for the first time, my parents told me that I looked around and said, "Wow! The trees really DO have leaves." I probably actually had terrible vision from the time I was a toddler or preschooler but just adapted really well. 

My vision was so bad, in fact, that I was the youngest my eye doctor ever put in contacts, because my glasses were so thick that he thought I'd do much better in them. I'm now 52 and I've been wearing contacts since I was 8. 

Thankfully, age-related vision problems started late for me, not like the early 40s as is typical. When they did, as a photographer, I didn't want to wear reading glasses because I would be taking them on and off with every image I took. I tried the multi-focal contacts but I couldn't get used to them (plus, they were thick and due to my extreme dry eye, I needed thin contacts). 

My eye doctor offered another solution - using one eye for near vision and one for far vision. It's one of the cool things about how our brains can adapt... when your eyes start seeing that way, your brain learns when to get most of the data from the eye that's being used more at the time. For me, because I am left-eyed (like some are right-handed), my left eye is for distance and my right eye is for near vision. 

I had a hard time adapting at first to this type of vision correction, but my brain did eventually work well with this system. 

Until it didn't.

As my cataracts got worse, my brain started relying more and more on my left eye, as my right eye had the worse cataract. Plus, I wore my glasses a lot more or didn't use contacts at all and used the tiny bit of clear vision I had about 6-7 inches from my face (no more, no less). My brain couldn't keep up with the changes. 

As the cataract surgery drew near, I went without contacts completely because I had to put drops in my right eye 4 times a day - and couldn't have a contact in when I did it. It was a lot easier to just deal with my glasses (though they weren't the correct prescription - they were old) or with nothing.

So my brain got somewhat re-trained for my eyes to work together to focus. 

Now I have a new lens in my right eye. It's still for near vision and my near vision is amazing - 20/20 in that eye. But my brain hasn't yet re-adjusted to one eye being for near vision and one for far. It's not helping that I take out my contacts at night and so my left eye is incredibly blurry while my right eye can only see up close - but then when I wear them during the day it's the opposite. 

It's amazing just how annoying this is - it gives me a slight headache and just makes me feel "blah."

Are there many other life issues that are much worse? Yes! Does this mean I'm not thankful that my mom is doing well? Of course not! But I'm still very tired and SOOOOO ready for the other surgery in a few days. Then maybe my eyes can learn to work together and I can get past all this. At least I really hope so...


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