Later today I go under the knife – again. The surgeon will cut open my left cornea, break my clouded lens into pieces and remove them, then insert a new plastic lens. It’ll take about 15 minutes, and soon afterward, I’ll walk the mile or so home under the clear, mid-autumn sunshine.

You see, I have a rapidly advancing cataract in my left eye. I had it even worse in my right eye, but six weeks ago the eye surgeon here in Chiang Mai did his magic, and now my right eye sees more clearly than it ever has in my entire life.

It all started innocently enough. Back in February I got new glasses, but within two or three months I noticed that my right eye wasn’t seeing very clearly. It had been fine when I got the new glasses, but now…

I went back, they did their examination and – very gently – suggested I go see the vision department at the local hospital.

Huh? WTF?

So I went, and the nurses showed me the ultrasound map of my eye. It was definitely clouded up, with a vertical swatch up through the middle of my vision field already turning quite white. My first reaction was the universal “Naw, man. That kind of stuff doesn’t happen to me.”

You know… absolute denial… even while my eyes were telling me otherwise.

But being very familiar with the whole denial schtick, I stepped around it and asked the doctor to do the lens replacement as soon as possible. Preferably today. She was a bit taken aback by my eagerness – I guess she usually has to do a lot more persuading.

When I covered one eye and then the other, the difference was dramatic. Everything was so much more unclear with my right eye. I wanted vision in that eye to be as clear as it was with my left eye.

So, son-of-a-gun, they did it all that same day, and I walked home with a white plastic eye patch taped onto my face. Then, when I went back the next day, they pulled the cover off and tested my new vision.

Eye Can See!

To say that the difference was astounding is a major, major understatement. Damn! I could actually read the top line of the eye chart now. In fact, I could read all the way down that chart – something I’d never done before, ever. Since childhood, that eye had always been hyper-myopic. It was so near-sighted, it focused at about 5 or 6 inches. (That was extremely useful by the way during the years I worked as a camera repairman… built in magnifying loupe.)

But now, here I was with an actual, properly functioning right eye. I’d wanted my right eye to see as well as my left, but ironically, it was now seeing BETTER. Seems that while my right eye had been rapidly deteriorating, my left eye had been clouding up at a slightly more sedate pace. I asked the doctor how soon we could fix the left one, and she replied that their chief eye surgeon would be away for a month doing an extended seminar teaching doctors in other countries about the newest, most advanced techniques.

So this guy was a world-class “somebody.” And I had to wait till he was back on the job.

I’d already done some Internet research and discovered the term “medical tourism,” meaning people traveling to third-world countries for surgeries at affordable prices that would have bankrupted them back home. In fact, this hospital has a top-caliber cardiac department that could hold its own with virtually any hospital anywhere. And the head of the hospital’s eye department was the one who operated on me.

Ready, Set, Go

Well, the surgeon’s back, and just after lunchtime today, they’ll dilate my pupil, anesthetize my eye and do the lens switch. If it’s like last time, it’ll take fifteen minutes and be a piece of cake. After an hour or so of lying around “recuperating,” I’ll walk out with a white plastic eye cup taped to my face with white paper tape, and head for home. Next day, I’ll go back for a quick eye test and that’ll pretty much be that.

I’ll take antibiotics for a few days, and they’ll prescribe pain killers, but I won’t bother with them, and after another week, it’ll basically be a small episode in my past.

Oh, and I’ll be seeing much more clearly, without the clouding that made everything look low-contrast, yellowish and misty.

And I’m definitely looking forward to it. (Pun intended)

What Have We Been Missing?

You know, through it all, I’ve been thinking about clear vision, and how only a small part of our vision comes through our eyes. Actually most of what we “see” (or think we see) is within our minds.

Don’t you wish there were a quick 15-minute surgery that’d clear your inner vision? What a great thing that’d be. If I could bottle it, I’d be a very rich man.

Well, in a way, there is such an operation. But it’s not surgery with a physical knife. It’s a more mental thing… of course. Mental and spiritual exercises designed to cut away the denial, the fear, the blindness.

And of course we know them, but are we doing them? Or are we flatly denying the need for better, clearer mental vision? “Naw man. That kind of thing doesn’t happen to me.” Still denying the whole thing.

So just think, over the next few days, how much do you want to see?

Cheers from warm and smiling Thailand,
Charles

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