DROP BY DROP, into my recovering eye, post cataract surgery. The 'new' eye sees detail at distance, transmitting a cooler bluer world to me full of sharp clarity… but disputing with my other eye, still back in my long accustomed short-sightedness. Boxing day and just over a week since I underwent the procedure. Three weeks more of those drops, the second one at least, four times a day… The gritty feeling is no longer an issue…
This re-incarnation cannot replicate the super close up facility I have so long had to rely on — and come to value. For now, one eyed operation is what I must work with, until my left eye goes through the second stage of what is after all a bilateral procedure. For the time being I must manage a twisted regime. Left sided: super close up, or with appropriate spectacle lens, the middle distance via the unaltered eye. The treated, right sided eye — long distance, and the more further extension of middle distance [middle distance is a little less than arm's length]: but nothing close up — unless assisted by borrowed reading glasses, which of course, conflict the untreated left.
It is called disparity. I should think it to be the most awkward aspect of getting your eyes fixed in this manner.
Cataract surgery for me is not principally about addressing the obstruction of my vision by a clouding of my eyes' lenses, although that too was coming to pass — but to physically respond to increasing myopia, which was reaching the end of what can reasonably be addressed via the prescription of a glass lens.
I have waited a long time for the 'phacoemulsification of cataract and insertion of intraocularlens' (it was/is not without risk, moderate in my case, due to the shape of my eyeballs, likened to the characteristic shape of bananas by one inspecting medic, I kid you not!)…
The truth is, right now, the reconditioned eye function is conditioned, constrained, until both eyes have approximately the same acuity status. Then we shall see. Thereafter, after further testing and re-assessment by an ophthalmologist, I am also anticipating the recovery of my ability to discern the middle distances, by recourse to my next spectacles prescription.
Will there be situations where I can, for the first time ever, go unaided by spectacles? I shall soon find out I hope.
I fear I shall miss, badly at first, the super close up aspect of having been so myopic. The principle advantage: to be able to inspect in detail, without lens or magnifier. To read the ever so small print! Gone for good, traded for views of the bright blue uplands! How will I find those splinters and tiny thorns that prick my fingers then? How will I appreciate the scales of butterfly wings, the interior spaces and detail of flowers, the exactitude or otherwise of maps, print and image?
Well we will see I suppose, or rather, I will. I am sure I may hanker for this lost facility when it is no more… even now, at this midway stage, still possible with the untreated eye, I am soberly brought to the realisation that one can't have it all… if one's eyes are as compromised as mine…
