New face, again

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Holy shit, do I look tired.

I don’t even remember how long it’s been since I got LASIK– it was pre-Covid, I think, so it was in the Before Times and therefore was somewhere between seven and a million years ago and cannot be nailed down any more precisely by any human agency. The final-final-final resolution of All That is those glasses, which are new as of this evening, and are, for the first time in my life, bifocals.

For some time now I’ve been back in glasses, but sort of part-time? I didn’t need them for reading, and I found that in other contexts I didn’t want them on– eating was weird, and anything involving close detail work inevitably involved me removing my glasses. And being back in glasses again wasn’t that big of a deal– I started wearing them in second grade, remember, so it just wasn’t that big of a deal, but putting them on and taking them off constantly was driving me insane. So at my last eye appointment I told my doctor that I was interested in a more permanent prescription that would fix that problem. My understanding is that the “reading” part of the glasses involves very little correction, if any at all, and then there’s the weird transition area and the regular prescription, and, well. Sitting at my computer and typing was the last test the new glasses needed to pass and right now they’re doing quite well.

It’s too bad that LASIK didn’t work out perfectly for me, but honestly I’m still not super inclined to complain about it– my vision is enormously improved from before I had the surgery, but because I was blind as hell before I had the surgery they just couldn’t get me up to perfect, or at least couldn’t do it on the first try, and I’ve politely declined to give them a second chance to cut my eyes open with lasers. I can do lots of things without my glasses that were flatly impossible before; if I get up and go to the bathroom at night I don’t need to put them on, I can see while I’m swimming or in the shower, and I can drive without them. If I were to somehow lose my glasses, I’d be annoyed but fine until the new pair showed up. I apparently view my vision like I view my politics; I didn’t get perfect, but I got a substantial improvement and I’m perfectly happy with that.

Also, if you can get your frames from Costco, jump on that. I haven’t gotten a new pair of glasses for less than $400 in a minute, and these were less than a third of that.

So, ignoring the face they’re sitting on, how do they look?

In which I am falling apart

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I had my first dentist appointment since before the pandemic started yesterday morning, and while I don’t have any new cavities or anything worth talking about– it was just a cleaning, after all– it was a cleaning after about a year and a half when normally my hygienist likes to see me every three months so that she can keep an eye on my gums. She did not quite resort to a circular saw to clean my teeth, but it bloody well felt like it, and then I fucked around and had a chicken sandwich for lunch that ripped up the roof of my mouth, so I spent all day yesterday with my teeth and the inside of my mouth aching in a way that wasn’t necessarily bad— like, on that 1-10 scale they like, it’d have been a one or a two– but in terms of sheer persistence was making me absolutely nuts. I had cottage cheese and some loose deli meat last night for dinner last night because the notion of eating anything I’d have to spend much time chewing just seemed entirely unacceptable.

Today I had an eye appointment; those I’ve stayed current on, since they don’t require people to stick their hands in my mouth, which seems safer, but I’m starting to think that I need to go back in time and prevent myself from getting LASIK. The punch line is, at least according to my eye doctor, who was the person who did the LASIK, this was probably coming anyway, and at best might have been faintly aggravated by the LASIK, but I’m having annoying issues with keeping my tear films properly hydrated, despite the fact that I spend half my day every day pouring liquids into my eyes. She flat-out admitted that she doesn’t quite understand what’s going on with me right now, because my vision is varying widely depending on, well, something, but we don’t know what. Like, on one visit I’ll be corrected to 20/10, and then on this one I was at 20/40, and I was at 20/30 on the last one, and the only things that seem to be consistently different are the tear film thicknesses. Today ended with me walking out with two new sets of eyedrops (one medicinal in a fashion that I’m not 100% clear on, another simply an upgrade to the artificial tears I was already using) along with a heat mask that I’m supposed to wear for 15 minutes before bed every night and tiny little plastic plugs inserted into my tear ducts, which were supposed to help me in some way that she explained perfectly clearly at the time and I can no longer repeat. So all day today my eyes have been bugging me.

She was also horrified that my insurance company turned down the sleep study, which … yeah, that’s a whole separate other thing. I feel like I’ve got enough medical issues going on right now without tossing sleep apnea on top. (And suddenly I’m wondering if you can just buy a CPAP, and how expensive such a thing is.)

Anyway, my point is that my everything aches right now and maybe spending all day staring at screens isn’t the smartest move I could be making with my life right now, but, well. We all know how good I am at making decisions.

LASIK, six months later

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I had my eyes lasered six months and ten days ago, and I thought it might be useful to take a minute and talk about how that’s been going.

And honestly, so far, my experience has been kind of mixed. I am very definitely still healing, and things are still changing on a week-to-week basis. One thing I wasn’t aware of going into the process was that apparently nearsightedness takes a bit longer to heal than farsightedness does, and I was quite nearsighted. I’m also suffering from not being able to simply put my glasses back on to compare glasses-assisted vision to what I have now. So let’s do a pros and cons list.

Pros:

  • Pain, even very early on, has been virtually nonexistent. For the first couple of days after the surgery the first maybe five minutes after waking up, when I’m just opening my eyes for the first time, had that sort of pebbly there’s-something-under-my-eyelids feeling that you might get when you’re really tired. But that went away quickly and there’s been no issues since then.
  • I’ve experienced no starbursting or any degeneration of my ability to drive at night.
  • Close-up vision is essentially perfect for 90% of the day, and my vision has been corrected to somewhere in the 20/20-25/20 range. For the purposes of this conversation I’m defining “close-up” as anything within five or six feet, and when they give you that little card to read at “normal reading distance” at the eye doctor I can read the smallest print easily.. This is where I wish I had my glasses, because there’s a lot of “could I have read that with my glasses on seven months ago?” going on with text that is farther away than that.

Cons:

  • That other 10% of the day. My eyes get tired more easily than they used to, and I swear they produce more crud than they used to as well. I have gone from someone who never needed eyedrops to still using them (non-medicinal rewetting drops, to be clear) maybe two or three times a day. The last hour of the day can sometimes be a bit of a struggle, and that just wasn’t the case when I was wearing glasses.

Now, some caveats and provisos and quid pro quos:

  • I don’t think it’s unfair to point out that working from home during quarantine has had a serious effect on my eyes. I spend eight hours a day at my computer, to start, and that was never the case before. It is rare that I have to focus on something more than ten to fifteen feet away, and that is probably fucking with my mid- and particularly my long-distance vision. One thing I’ve noticed: I sit maybe ten feet away from the TV when we’re watching shows, and we typically keep closed captions or subtitles on regardless of what we’re watching them. At the beginning of watching a show, it can be a struggle to keep the captions in clean focus. That’s almost never a problem by the end of the show, so it’s a case of my eyes taking a minute to adjust to focusing on something out of arm’s length. Similarly, it just occurred to me in the last couple of days that our new TV puts out a lot more light than the old one, which might be why longer video game sessions bug me more than they used to. I need to adjust where I’m putting my chair; I wasn’t too close to the old TV, but I think I am too close to the new one. That’s an eye issue, but it’s not LASIK’s fault.
  • Similarly, the first couple of minutes of driving anywhere (I leave the house maybe once a week) always involve me thinking about my eyes a lot. It goes away quickly. I have never, even for a moment, even at night, thought that I couldn’t see well enough to drive, but that first minute or so always involves lots of staring at trees long distances away and wondering what they looked like when I wore glasses.

Things are still getting better on a week-to-week basis, I think, and I’m spending a lot less time thinking about my eyes than I used to, but I’m not exaggerating when I tell you that the first two or three months in particular were a bit more of a trial than I expected. I don’t think I made a mistake, mind you, but as someone who didn’t mind wearing glasses all that much, I don’t know if I’d do it again, if that makes any sense. If you really feel like glasses or contacts are a pain in the ass, I’d definitely still suggest you think strongly about doing it– but just be aware that the healing process is a lengthier thing than you might have expected.

How do Sundays work again?

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I mowed the lawn this morning, for the first time in … um … a while, after looking at it the other day and realizing that it really was starting to look like the house had maybe been abandoned. My lawn right now is a weird mix of 1) dead, yellow grass, because it hasn’t been raining much; 2) weeds, up to two feet tall in one specific place, because apparently weeds don’t require nutrients to grow, and 3) the occasional patch that apparently gets a better mix of sun and shade and needed cutting but wasn’t necessarily looking completely out of control. But there are definitely patches where nothing has grown in weeks, meaning that about half the time it was super obvious where I’d mown and where I hadn’t and the other half I was basically trying to find the tracks the mower had left in the dead grass.

9 years and counting in this house, and I still hate my lawn.

And then Dad came over, and he and the boy went swimming, and we had pizza for dinner, and now I’m trying my best to not remember that I actually have a small amount of grading and lesson planning to get done tonight, because this is officially the first Sunday of the school year and Sunday is Grading Day again. There’s nothing that will take too long– one advantage of e-learning is that I can justify doing everything electronically and mostly multiple choice, so the computer can do the grading for me and I just have to record it– but I’m still vaguely resentful of the entire process.

Oh, and I got manipulated into volunteering (that’s a thing) to be team leader this year, which comes with more responsibility and zero additional pay, so that’s an extra meeting this week. I think I can dodge some professional development for it, though, which is probably a net positive.

I’m still probably gonna go play video games after I finish this.

I realized a couple of days ago that I could read the titles on my bookshelves while sitting in my recliner in the living room. While yesterday specifically was definitely rough, I’m definitely officially healing up now, and I haven’t had much cause to complain about my vision at all for at least a week or so. The surgery was a month and three days ago, and I had a one-month follow-up last week and the same doctor who was concerned about my eyes being too dry last time proclaimed me “much better” and “healing perfectly” this time. My understanding is that nearsightedness takes a little longer to heal than farsightedness does, so I expect more improvement over the next few weeks, but honestly if it were to stabilize right around where it is I think I’d be pretty damn happy. Seriously, if you’ve ever considered this and you have the money I’d jump at it; if you’re local enough to use the same folks I did, let me know, as they sent me a couple of $500 off coupons that don’t have expiration dates on them.

One-week LASIK update and a book note

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My LASIK surgery was a week ago today, and I’m pleased to announce that I seem to be adjusting fine. Other than the first few minutes after waking up during the first day or two, there’s been no pain, and as you would probably expect I’m noticing my vision less and less as the days go on. I’m still not as happy with my distance vision as I want to be, but the “good range,” for lack of a better phrase, does seem to be expanding, and the scientist in me is suffering from being unable to put my glasses back on and compare what my vision was like back then to what it is now. It’s entirely possible that this is just what it’s always been but I’m paying more attention to it now, but the fact that I don’t know and don’t have a way to check is making me moderately crazy.

The urge to reach for my glasses in the morning and when I get out of the shower remains pretty overwhelming– 37 years of conditioning will do that to you– and I’m also noticing that at the end of the day my eyes are tired, leading to a similarly overwhelming urge to remove the contact lenses that are not actually in my eyes and put my glasses back on. In fact, honestly, other than the (no longer an issue) early eye pain, this has been almost exactly like adjusting to contact lenses, except for all the eyedrops and the vague notion that my vision is improving from day to day. I need to find an excuse to take a drive after dark sometime this week to see if I have any issue with halos or starbursting; driving in general is fine so long as I’m going places I’m used to driving to (which is 100% of my driving; I’m not leaving the house much, because quarantine) but I’m not sure my distance vision is great for driving somewhere new, because I have to get pretty close to road signs before they’re legible and if I was looking for street signs to know where to turn I’d have to either drive slower than was safe or make some very abrupt decisions.

One way or another, though, I’ve been repeatedly assured that the stuff I’m currently concerned about will get better, and I still am amazed at how easy the surgery and the recovery process have been. Yesterday was the first day that I didn’t spend every second I was awake thinking about my vision, so this is definitely on an upward trend.

One additional sign that my eyes are improving is that after not being able to read more than small chunks of Scarlet Odyssey at a time without my eyes getting tired, I blew through Ilhan Omar’s excellent memoir This is What America Looks Like in basically two sittings. Granted, it’s quite a bit shorter, at 265 pages and a relatively large font, but it’s nice that my ability to binge-read is coming back. This is one of those books where I think you probably already know if you want to read it or not, and if you do, you should follow that urge, and if you don’t, you should read it anyway. Omar’s story is barely even possible in America any longer, but remains a perfect example of the type of country we like to think we are, and her life has been fascinating regardless of what you think of her politics (not a problem for me, obviously) so the book is definitely an engaging read. If anything, I wish it was another hundred pages long, as I’d like to know more about what life was like as a younger person for her, both in the refugee camps and her first few years in America when she was trying to navigate middle school without being able to speak English. Give it a look.