Seeing. Believing.

I just wanted to check in with a few observations about my experience with impaired vision. See how insensitive language is? There I go again...

One, when the doctor says that the laser won't hurt, he's lying. I guarantee he's never had it done to his eyes. He does not know. (If your doctor is a she, she does not know.) If you have to have this done, demand strong pain killers. You won't need very many, but you'll need a few.

Wearing an eyepatch is weird. Period.

"A shot into your lower eyelid" is just exactly as pleasant as it sounds. I think I must have scared away some patients with my screaming. What I mean to say is that if I'd heard muffles of the sounds I was making as I'd been sitting in the waiting room, I'd have made an attempt to leave.

I wondered briefly if I could borrow a guide dog. Lola tried to play guide cat by chirping at me while I'd follow her. She led me to the food bowl, which says more about the nature of cats than anything.

The weirdest thing about the whole laser surgery experience was that for many hours, I could hardly move either eye. When I'd try to move my right eye--which is the one with the dead spot in the middle--the left eye would also try to move, and that hurt. I felt more impaired by that than anything.

The last couple of days have taught me that I take my sight for granted just as much as anybody else. I tried to come up with any activity I could do that wouldn't involve seeing, and I came up with talking on the phone. Unfortunately I couldn't find anybody else at home.

I still can't see clearly out of either eye, so please forgive typos. The world I live in as a seeing person is more visually oriented than I had realized, and I know I'm jumping the gun on things like sitting at a computer terminal typing, but I wasn't sure what else to do.

before - after