Double Vision

If I’d been born in a different time, I’d have spent most of my life in a home for the blind… or as a charity case at some relative’s or do-gooder’s home. Since I was eight, I’ve been so near-sighted that if my vision couldn’t be corrected with glasses and contact lenses, I’d be considered legally blind.

I wore contacts from the time I was seventeen into my mid-forties, when  I began having trouble with distance vision. I went the “one contact for distance, one contact for close work” for a while, but eventually gave up and started wearing glasses full time.

All that changed in 2008 when my right retina detached. The surgery was a success, but as frequently happens in such cases, a cataract began developing. I spent about a year waiting it out, upgrading contacts or glasses every few months. My left eye stayed around -7.50 (which I don’t even know how to convert to 20/whatever) and my right eye eventually went to I think a -14.0. With either one, instead of looking for the big E at the eye doctor’s, you have some vague idea of where the chart itself is and that’s about it.

But then in early 2010, the cataract was removed. I cried; not only could I see there was a clock on the operating room wall; I could read it. Without correction.

For the past year, I’ve thought about getting laser surgery on the other eye. The specialists  warn of a slight risk of complication if my left retina ever detaches. My thinking is that that’s not an “if” but rather a “when” given that I earlier had a pinprick hole in the left eye in the spot that corresponds to where the right retinal detachment began.

It’s an odd thing, having perfect vision (other than reading glasses) in one eye, and legal blindness in the other when I’m not wearing a contact. (I can’t get regular glasses to correct this; the difference between the eyes is too wide.) But it’s also a gift. When I need to, I can see the world very clearly.  And those times I prefer vague and blurry and out of focus, well, I can do that too.