I can see clearly now....

The month of October ended on a terrific note for me! This was the month that I finally convinced myself that I deserved the luxury of fixing my myopia. I started wearing glasses in elementary school, when my teacher noticed that even though I was sitting in the front row, I still couldn’t make out the writing on the black board. She sent a note to my mom and the whole world became sharper when I was fitted with my new blue glasses. I hated wearing glasses, but I hated not seeing even more. At fourteen, my first summer job bought me a pair of contact lenses (it took my entire summer earnings) and it was a love/hate relationship with my contact lenses also. When laser eye surgery came out, I was skeptic, and not sure I wanted anyone to fool around with my eyes. But laser eye surgery has now been around for 20 years, and the results are astounding. So, if I can run a marathon at 55, why not get my eyes fixed? I have been spending every evening doing extra accounting work for my niece’s company – and decided that I would put the extra earning to good use – me!

So I found myself on October 28th at the LasikMD clinic in Pointe-Claire, feeling a little nervous, but determined. The surgeon sat down with me and asked me if I had any final questions – I didn’t since the staff had been extremely thorough in explaining every step and answering all my questions before hand. What I was really thinking was that if the last thing I would see in the unlikely case that I lost my vision, would be this surgeon, then at least it would be a pleasant memory – real eye candy he is. :o) I was offered an Ativan to soothe my worries away, and I gladly accepted (it was a good idea). About 10 to 15 minutes after taking the Ativan (I already had started losing track of time) I was brought in and asked to lay on a table. The surgeon taped my right eyelid open and used spreaders to keep it that way. He asked me to look at the red light above not to move. A couple of drops in each eye to anesthetize them and within 10 minutes he had completed both eyes. Totally painless – just a queasy feeling when he peeled my cornea back (yechh). A pair of very dark wraparound sunglasses where put on my face, and I was asked to wait in the waiting room for 45 minutes. Thanks to the Ativan, I promptly fell asleep on my chair, so the wait lasted mere minutes for me. A quick check by the doctor to make sure that everything was OK and I was sent home.

My sister Brigitte, who lives nearby, (thank you ever so much!) was the one who drove me to the clinic and picked me up. I arrived at her apartment on Friday after the surgery and went straight to bed, waking up around 8pm. No real pain, just a scratchy feeling in my eyes, as if my contact lenses had been in there too long. But behold, I could see! Even through the dark sunglasses I could see! Wonderful! I was only up a couple of hours that evening, it was the next morning that I truly realised that I had 20/20 vision, which was confirmed at my follow up checkup that day.  I took one day off work (Friday) and was back at my desk like nothing had happened on Monday morning. I was even able to do a pleasant 12k run on the Sunday before!

Ten days later, I still can’t believe that I don’t need any glasses or contact lenses. Running without glasses or contact lenses is a joy – and little things delight me, like waking up in the middle of the night and actually being able to make out the time on my alarm clock. Of course, we must not forget that I am in my fifties, and that means that I still need reading glasses. Laser surgery will fix Astigmatism and Myopia (both of which I had) but will not fix old age (too bad!) Still, I was pleasantly surprised. I can function fairly well without reading glasses – I bought a pair at the pharmacy and use them at work when reading small print. I do not need my reading glasses to work on the computer.

If you are interested in finding out more information here is the link to LasikMD http://www.lasikmd.com/ All in all, I would recommend laser eye surgery to anyone who wears glasses – it feels great to toss them! Actually, they collect all the old glasses and donate them to charity. Someone somewhere will be wearing my old glasses soon enough, and I am glad it isn’t me!