Close-Up And Personal

I've had cataracts in both eyes since I was 16, maybe before that but they were first diagnosed at that time. I'll have surgery for both this summer. I'm glad I'll be able to do it this year, it's high time.

There's something unusual about the surgery. They ask you to decide whether you want really excellent close-up vision or really excellent distant vision. They can actually give you one or the other and then glasses to assist with the opposite vision. The surgeon explained for someone like him, it's a no brainer, he'd pick close-up vision, since doing surgery requires it and it's what he does most of the day. He'd get glasses for his faraway sight.

Still I found it really tough to decide whether to get excellent near vision or excellent far vision. It's not that one precludes the other, it's just you need to think of your life and what you do more of -- looking out at the crowd and the sky and the world and the sun -- or looking up close at work right at arms length. In the end, I had to chose the big picture. To see my son playing in the park, to see the beach, to see a room full of people at a party, to see a movie easily, to be in the largest world possible. So when it comes to up close, I might need glasses on occasion, but to see the big picture -- I'll be able to take it all in.

I think the most exciting part of the whole thing is to have ANY vision at all, as my eyes are really lousy. I can't wait. The surgery and recovery process sound interesting. Your vision goes in and out from very far to very close until it rests at the place you requested. A new friend described his surgery and the days post-op when a most unusual thing happened. As his eyes adjusted to their eventual focus, at one point he could see with incredible far-sighted precision and actually saw the thread-thin legs on a spider perfectly from more than 10 feet away as it crawled up the wall on the other side of the room. Spooky. Now that would be something to see. The itsy-bitsy spider.