As I see it has suddenly been turned on its head, so to speak. While I once needed corrective lenses for distance vision and could see without correction on close work, I now see clearly in the distance but need glasses for reading.
What goes on here?
I just had cataract surgery.
As a small boy in the third grade I had been prescribed for glasses for, among other reasons, to be able to see the school blackboard or a pitched baseball. I’ll never forget my first fight on the way to school when a close friend called me “Mr. Peepers” after the Wally Cox character in the 1950s TV show of that name.
I also have a clipping from my old hometown newspaper, the Athol Daily News, reporting on the results of a local Little League baseball game (yes, that was done in those days). In it I am described as a “bespectacled firstsacker.”
I wore those glasses until the summer before my freshman year in high school, when I became one of the pioneers in the use of contact lenses. Those lenses, as I’ve noted in the past, plus a six-inch growth spurt and a new spiked-up hairstyle, gave me a new image.
At the same time, the images I saw became much clearer. I remember for the first time seeing trees as a collection of individual leaves as opposed to a green blob.
The first contacts were large, rigid plastic disks that required some break-in time. Until I got used to them, I blinked a lot and shied away from bright lights. Even when I got used to them, complications were inherent.
As a first baseman on the high school baseball team, I once collided with the catcher on a pop-up down the first base line, dislodging and losing a lens, which necessitated that I be removed from the game. That happened on a number of occasions in my basketball career as well, including the time when U.S. Army and U.S. Air Force service teams in France were photographed crawling around the floor looking for my lost lens. But the ability to see clearly more than made up for the inconvenience.
Over time, contact lens development led to smaller lenses and more comfortable material, right up to the current floppy, disposable lenses.
As I aged, however, I found it more difficult to insert and take out these new lenses and reverted most of the time to the use of traditional glasses, saving the contacts for such sporting events as skiing or golf or such social events as a family reunion or a formal civic function.
But in recent annual examinations, my eye doctor began to note the development of cataracts to the point that I finally qualified for surgery. Along the way I began to have some difficulty in driving at night, avoiding that whenever possible.
It was time.
But then I had a choice to make – correction for perfect distance vision, correction for perfect close vision, correction of one eye done for each distance with the brain eventually making the adjustment, or, finally, a bifocal lens in each eye.
While insurance covers only the first three, that wasn’t the deciding factor for me. I just wanted to have, for the first time in my life, perfect unassisted distance vision for driving, for watching television, for playing golf, for attending social occasions. I didn’t mind at all the idea of slipping on a pair of reading glasses for the morning newspapers or the computer screen. I was simply flip-flopping the times I would need to use glasses.
To say the least, I was a bit nervous for the early morning appointment to replace the first lens. After all, they were cutting into my eye! But everyone was pleasant. After being prepped with electronic monitoring devices and anesthesia tubing, I was ushered into the operating room and positioned on the table. And then…I don’t remember what happened. The next thing I do remember is drinking orange juice and eating sugar cookies. Thank you, anesthesia.
In the interim, I had a new eye, though it would be days before the vision cleared entirely. Three weeks later, the picture came into further focus as the second eye was done, though that, too, had to settle down after the surgical procedure when a small capillary broke sometime in the night and left me with a bright red corner of my eye the next morning. A quick return to the doctor’s office assured me that it would fade away, and it eventually did.
So, after some 75 years, “I can see clearly now.” (Thank you, Johnny Nash.)
Please let me know if my viewpoint changes in these As I See It columns. After all, I am looking at things a little differently now.
Stuart Deane lives in Newburyport.