Tomorrow I will experience a miracle, I am getting bladeless lasik surgery and will have 20/20 vision without contacts or glasses!
Do you remember in elementary school when they would line you up in the cafeteria or library for a vision and ear test? Until the fifth grade, I would stand in line and memorize the eye chart. The line would always swing around close enough to catch a glimpse of the last 3 rows, so that when it came time to cover one eye, I would pass my sight test with flying colors! Like all good teacher’s pets, I sat in the front of the room so there was never a problem reading the board.
I lived my childhood never really seeing leaf definition in the trees or being able to recognize people from far away… I DIDN’T CARE, because I didn’t have to be a dork in glasses.
Somehow in middle school, I was assigned to a mid to back row and could no longer function in class without seeing the board. I remember going to the optometrist and getting my eyes tested, hoping with all my might that somehow, just by visiting the eye doctor, I would be fixed and not have to wear glasses. Before I went in to be tested, mom helped me pick out a few pairs that looked “nice.” When the doctor wrote my prescription for glasses I freaked. Tears streamed from my eyes that immediately became red and puffy! In that moment, it didn’t matter what the glasses looked like, I knew it would be terrible no matter what, so I ended up with huge, ugly circle glasses that tented in the sun and didn’t change back when I came inside for at least 5 minutes. They were terrible.
Luckily, when I entered 7th grade mom let me wear contacts! They couldn’t be colored because she loves my baby poop, yellow, brown, green eyes, but I didn’t care because I got rid of the retched things!
I have worn contacts ever since and have only slept in them about 2 nights in my whole life. Disposable, pieces of plastic rubbing my cornea day after day and the insertion, removal and care was always something that merited the greatest care. I am amazed by contacts and thankful for their invention, but eventually it got to be too much, my eyes would protest every second of it, until months ago when I became a full time glasses wearer.
Tomorrow I will experience a miracle!! I will be able to see 20/20 without glasses or contacts! It will be one of the best decisions I have ever made in my life.
With my new improved eyes, here is a list of things I hope I NEVER take for granted:
To wake up and see the time on my alarm clock from ½ way across the room.
To play the piano in my glasses and see my fingers out of my peripheral, heck, to have peripheral vision!
To shave my legs in the shower and not miss a HUGE patch of hair because I can’t see it.
To never be frustrated when I can’t tell the difference between 1 and 2 at the optometrist.
To watch a movie without having to lick my finger and stick it in my eye to unstuck my contact.
The fact that my eyes will not look like tiny beads behind my glasses.
To never feel on every surface to find my glasses, or get frustrated and ask someone else to find them, just so I can see enough to do a menial morning or night time task.
To sweat without my glasses falling down my face and get rid of the constant acne around the bridge of my nose.
To never worry about the corneal thickness, curvature, and surface regularity or feel the effects.
To perform without being able to see people face’s because my contact is dry or out of focus.
To lay in bed and see the white dots on the roof and for shadows to have definition in the dark.
But alas, I have taken for granted my ability see at all, my whole life, and will probably take this miracle for granted too. HOWEVER, tonight the prideful little girl who squinted her whole childhood and the grown girl obsessed with quality and efficiency will be thankful and rejoice for the legally blind will see!
