The Eyes Have It
My life in vision correction
This week I’m writing from the lobby of the ambulatory surgery center where Pops is getting cataract surgery. He was a little stressed leading up to today, but he is a good Capricorn who likes the structure of rules and procedures1, and the surgeon and her team provided plenty of rules and procedures to follow pre- and post-op, so that helped ease his mind.
Pops has been my guide in most things related to eye health, as he was the parent who wore vision correction from a young age. I was in junior high when I got glasses for the first time at EyeLab, an optometrist/optician office in Rockville. I don’t remember much of that initial exam, but I remember the modern design of the office, its sleek cases holding eyeglass frames of all styles and sizes, from round to square. I picked out a pair of pale blue plastic frames that flattered my tween features as much as anything could at that point in my angsty pubescence. Once the glasses were ready for pickup I took the grey fabric case and carried them around with me. I wore my glasses in the classroom, to help me see the blackboard, and to the movies. My myopia wasn’t too bad at that point so I didn’t need to wear glasses all the time, and I don’t think many photos exist of me wearing those light blue glasses. It was many years before I donated those eyeglasses to Lions Club, wondering who might wind up needing the same prescription I did.
When I got to high school, I started wearing contact lenses. Learning how to insert contacts was probably the most challenging, especially when I was sitting with the experts at the eyecare place and they were closely watching my efforts. I don’t do well with physical tasks when I’m being observed, and I may have told them to stop looking at me so I could get that tiny piece of plastic on my cornea. In the mid-80s, soft contact lenses were made to be worn for a year before a new pair was needed. Pops had been wearing contacts for many years, and he coached me on proper hygiene for cleaning and insertion. “Put down a towel along with your saline, cleaning drops, and your case,” he told me, laying out everything on the blue-green patterned hand towel in my bathroom. He showed me how to put a couple drops of the lens cleaning solution on each contact lens, reminding me not to rub too hard to clean the lens, and how to carefully rinse the lens with saline over the sink so the lens wouldn’t go down the drain. Every night after cleaning my lenses and putting each lens in a separate saline-filled compartment in a plastic case, I placed the case in what Pops called the “cooker”, an electronic device designed to disinfect the lenses overnight. “Did you put your lenses in the cooker?” was a phrase I heard almost as often as “the train is leaving the station” on the mornings Pops took me to school. Every week, the contact lenses got a more comprehensive cleaning with an enzymatic cleaning solution, which involved dissolving tiny tablets in two clear vials half-full of saline. The lenses soaked for several hours in the solution, then rinsed and prepped for the cooker, once again. After those weekly enzymatic cleanings the lenses often felt much more comfortable to wear. Because I had seasonal allergies that affected my eyes, one optometrist recommended I periodically use Miraflow cleaning drops to help remove any extra allergen buildup and mucus from the lenses. I always had rewetting drops on hand, too, to deal with any dryness or irritation throughout the day.
This afternoon I put a dose of pre-op tropicamide phenylephrine in Pops’s left eye before we went upstairs to the surgery center. He’d had Mari putting them in because he couldn’t manage to align the bottle opening with his eye. “You never used rewetting drops?” I asked him. “No, maybe once a long time ago,” he said. Pops didn’t have the allergy issues that Momcat and I did, nor has he had to deal with any dryness—as a result he’s continued to wear contact lenses into his late 70s.
We both transitioned to monthly wear contacts when the prices went down. In the last 6 years I moved to dailies, as my eyes still get easily irritated by environmental factors and allergens, and I don’t wear contacts all that often anymore. Around the same time I started wearing reading glasses with my contacts, but I have yet to move to progressives for my glasses. Out of all the frustrating parts of aging, I find the vision changes to be at the top of the list, because whether I’m wearing my glasses or my contacts, I still have to put on or take off something in order to read or see fine details.
Pops came out of surgery wearing big black protective sunglasses. “You look a little like Roy Orbison,” I said as he walked toward me, a little shaky on his feet. “That can be my next career,” he said, which made the nurse accompanying him laugh. We headed back to his house, the same house where he first taught me the importance of good eye care. As I drove his car back, I reminded him several times not to rub his left eye as he wiped away tears. He tested his vision a few times, marveling at the fact that he could see clearly. As we inched through traffic he began to notice blurriness, but since the nurse had said “if it’s blurry, don’t worry,” he stayed calm.
When I got home tonight, I took out my contacts and threw them away. I’m heading to the optometrist again soon for an exam, and I suspect my prescription may have changed. I may decide I’m ready for progressive lenses. Whatever comes next for me, I know Pops will be there to provide wise counsel, and for that I am grateful.
Background: https://www.reviewofcontactlenses.com/article/replaceable-lenses-irreplaceable-progress
Even if he questions them because he is a lawyer and inherently argumentative.