If you ever wondered what an astigmatism looks like I have the answer for you it looks like the infinity bit in this picture.
This is the astigmatism in my left eye, I am greedy got one in my right too. Well that isn’t quite correct what I should say is that it was the one in my left eye, but I don’t actually have any.
Confussed? Let me try and unravel that last sentence.
For all my life I have had bad vision, as a child I wore milk bottles. As an adult I was once asked at a bus stop by someone what the number of the bus that was approaching was only to realise I couldn’t even see the bus! In my twenties I was told I would wear glasses all my life and contact lens wouldn’t really be an option, I did try them at one point, but they were right it wasn’t really an option for me. However, yesterday all that changed. I bit the bullet and got laser correction surgery done to them, including removing my astigmatisms.
The procedure is actually very straightforward and painless if a bit uncomfortable. The most disconcerting bit was when the laser started up, there was a warning in the literature that there would be a clicking sound, it sounded more like a jack hammer! After needing my glasses to walk into the room and lie down on the table a couple of minutes later I was able to see better than I ever had before, although the light was uncomfortable and things were a bit foggy I was able to walk out of the room without first having to stop and put my glasses on.
A day on and the fogginess has gone, although bright light is still a bit uncomfortable and I am driving the daughter mad telling her everything I can now see. For the next week I have a cocktail of drops to put in my eyes, which is more of a faff than the surgery and I have to sleep with goggles on to stop me rubbing my eyes while asleep and dislodging the flap the laser made, but once it has healed over they too will be a thing of the past. For the first time in my life I can see without glasses, it is wonderful. For those of you who don’t wear glasses it is probably hard to understand my utter joy, but for me who needed to put on glasses to find my glasses it is truly incredible. The small print I couldn’t see even with my glasses on before, unless it was actually right under my nose, I can now see without glasses and at a reasonable distance; distant details that were lost to me before are now in clear sharp focus; the calendar and clock and details which before I needed to concentrate and squint at before finally recognising what is said, now just needs a quick glance; and when once I couldn’t find my car keys without my glasses on, now I have just been told I can drive the car without them. I knew my eyes were bad, but until today I didn’t realise just how bad they were and how people like my daughter with better than 20/20 vision (which is what she has always had and I now have) see the world.
My only regret is that I didn’t bite the bullet and get it done before now.
