Thursday, April 2

“My eye feels like sandpaper.”

So said Karla when I picked her up after she had a new lens put in her right eye. She complained about the cut near the edge of her cornea having left a little rough spot. It’ll be fine by morning, she was reassured by the doctors who performed the surgery.

The hardest thing about the whole process was deciding whether to select just one of the myriad options available—close vision, distance vision, dual vision like bifocal glasses, near vision in one eye, distance in the other, a partridge in a pear tree—are all options nowadays. I and several others encouraged her to go for distance vision since bifocal vision does weird things when darkness comes, something like jagged edges on what you’re looking at. Close vision is all you get if you lose your glasses, and far vision is what you need when you’re driving without your glasses.

The surgery required a laser-cut incision on the eye, and that leaves a little rough spot that irritates for awhile. Other than that, she’s feeling just fine. Right now she’s in bed with four humongous pillows behind her keeping her upper body upright from now till morning. Then we go back to Fresno to have the eye patch removed.

More tomorrow.

3 comments:

Pete S. said...

Get well, Karla! My older brother opted for close vision in one eye and distance in the other. It turned out that he's one of the people that doesn't adjust well to this, so he now wears glasses re-balance the two eyes.

Susan Hurley-Luke said...

I hope your eye feels better soon, Karla. You will be very glad to have the patch removed and see if it all turned out the way you wanted it to. Mom and Linda have had similar surgeries over here. Sorry about the outcome for your brother, Pete.

Jeff (as in nephew) said...

Older brother here. Yeah, I did struggle with the near/far difference for some time. Of late, though, without really realizing it, I seem to have adapted. Only took 10+ years. Now I wear glasses because my eyes have changed since I got the lenses (during cataract surgery).