Actually, I can’t. I’m what you might call blind as a bat.
Myopia (near sightedness) with astigmatism (irregular shaped cornea) runs in my family on my mother’s side – every woman, and some of the menfolk, too, have extremely poor vision. I am no exception, so when I was about 9 years old, I got my first taste of being called “four eyes”. My sight became steadily worse until I was in my early 20s, where it found its plateau at around -5.25 for each eye. Bad enough that I can only see 6″ in front of my face before things get blurry. My dreams of being a pilot were quashed at an early age.
When I turned 13, I got my first pair of contacts. Joy! Sure, they were still pretty primitive back then, and took a lot of work (no such thing as disposable lenses at that point) to keep clean and sanitized, but so worth the effort. Life went merrily along, and I got married, traveled, enjoyed life.
Then the Teen came along. Don’t get me wrong; I love my first born with all my heart, but I totally blame her for the changes in hormones that prevented me from being able to wear contacts ever again. She knows this. She’s fine with it too, and even finds it downright hilarious. Where did I go wrong? I know there’s a guilt trip gene in our makeup, because my mother has it down pat. Mine must be latent though, or even missing. Drat!
But I digress.
The Teen is now, well, a teenager. She’ll be 16 this year if she plays her cards right and that means that I’ve been back to wearing glasses for 15 years now. I haven’t taken it all that well. I hate every minute of it, in fact. I hate that the ear pieces have created permanent dents behind my ears. I hate the way they fog up in the cold. I loathe the way they get smeared when I hug someone too close – and I do that a lot, by the way… I’m a hugger – and that I never seem to have a cleaning cloth handy when I need one. I hate having to turn a certain way when being kissed, because I don’t want to catch the kisser with the edge, or if the kisser’s wearing glasses too, clash them together and possibly scratch lenses. (Making it sound like this happens a lot, but as much as I love kissing… we must refer back to the fact that I’m married to a very unromantic man. ‘Nuff said… although one day I may just snap and go on a kissing spree! Uh… I really need to learn to control my inside voice.)
Er… where was I going with this? Oh yes. Sorry.
I started dreaming about a miracle “cure” that would give me perfect vision. When laser surgery first became available to the masses, I wasn’t a candidate due to my astigmatism. Also, it was prohibitively expensive, which also made it out of the question, since I was young, broke, and still wearing contacts, so not all that motivated. That was then.
Today laser eye surgery has progressed to include techniques and radical new technologies that make my sight issues practically irrelevant. Last week I went in to have an assessment done by the doctors at Lasik MD here in Toronto. These folks are the leaders in this technology, and boy do they know their stuff.
I was there for over 2 hours, and in that time, I went through a myriad of different tests. I was scanned, had my pupils dilated, scanned some more, poked (literally), measured, and tested. As intense as it was, they were gentle and described exactly what they were going to do, and I was not uncomfortable or freaked out in any way. I don’t scare easily, so I guess I was pretty easy to work with (or so I was told). My hubby would never have been able to sit through any of that, given how freakishly sensitive he is about his eyes.
As it turns out, while I have extremely healthy eyes (good to know!) I am not a candidate for the Lasik procedure. My pupils are larger than normal (which makes me a bit more light sensitive than most), my corneas are too thin to allow the “flap” made in the procedure, and I have a very high prescription. Bummer.
However, on the bright side, I am a perfect candidate for PRK Advanced Custom Wavefront laser surgery! Dear reader, did you have a flash of dollar signs when you read “advanced custom” in that statement? Good eye.
When I finally got in to the “admin” part of the visit, after waiting about 45 minutes due to the fact that they forgot about me, we got down to brass tacks. The gal brightly slid the quote over to my side of the desk (lest she be overheard by the masses sitting outside her door) so I could have a gander. It’s about double what Lasik surgery costs, at $4000.00 ($Cad). Now, this is substantially higher than I had hoped to be quoted when I walked in, let me tell you. She did immediately say that because they had forgotten about me, and felt just terrible about it, that they were happy to take 10% off of that for me. Score? I guess. It’s not the $2K I was hoping for though!
What is perfect eyesight worth to you?
For me, it looks to be worth $3600 and a week or so off of work. My surgery is February 22nd.
