From the moment of my birth, I have always had an uneasy relationship with my eyes. I was born so cross-eyed (a condition known as strabismus) that only the white of one eye would be visible. My mother told me how neighbors and strangers would helpfully offer, "you might want to have that looked at."
At two I had eye muscle surgery that largely, but not completely, repaired the strabismus. It was then discovered that I was extremely farsighted. And so at aged two, I started wearing glasses. My mother then had a new ritual - asking me where I had left my glasses.
If you don't develop stereoscopic vision by the age of 5, you never will. Your brain can no longer develop the trick of merging two separate and slightly different images into a unified whole. I did not develop this trick, and so I have lacked stereo vision (I guess you would say I have monovision) my whole life. I look out of one eye, and the other is relegated to peripheral vision.
I started wearing bifocals at age 14. Trifocals came along in my early 40s.
So I finally said enough is enough. To be 100% dependent on glasses had come to be a terrifying thing. If I lost them or they became damaged, I would be incapacitated. I couldn't swim, snorkel or scuba dive.
As it turned out, I was far too farsighted to be a candidate for LASIK. So instead, I had intra-ocular lens transplants put in a month ago. This is the same procedure they follow for cataract surgery. They remove your crystalline lens (where cataracts grow) and replace it with what is essentially a contact lens in your eye. Funny, each one has a unique serial number. So I have now reached the age when my replacement parts have their own identifying numbers.
So the result? Spectacular! Having monovision has, for the only time in my life, turned out to have an advantage. My dominant left eye is slightly near-sighted now, and my weaker right eye is slightly far sighted. So I have not needed any glasses at all since the operation. From trifocals to no focals.
We all of us have things we hate about ourselves. And some of those things you can do something about, others you just can't. My eyes turned out to be both things. I have corrected the farsightedness, but I still have slightly crossed eyes and non-stereo vision.
I have come to appreciate this birth defect. It helps me empathize with everybody, because I know that everybody has things they would change if they could. I remember seeing a man on the metro once. In profile, he was handsome, well dressed, well-groomed. But then he turned and I could see that half of his face was covered in a port wine stain. I am sure that this caused him great grief, as have my eyes, but I could also see that he had accepted what he was given; he carried himself with dignity and the knowledge that he was, in fact, handsome. So there's wisdom there - if you can't change something, learn to live with it, perhaps even embrace it as your distinguishing feature.
In my 30s, when I should have been looking at lens transplants, instead I was looking at further muscle surgery, to (hopefully) completely straighten my eyes out. But this would have come with great risk - they could have ended up worse, or I could have gone the other way and ended up wall-eyed. Even if perfect, there was a risk I would see double. I might be blinded in one or both eyes.
But back then (I can hardly believe it now) the only things that stopped me were a lack of money and fear of the actual surgery. What should have stopped me is common sense. But like everyone else, I look in the mirror and see flaws as if they are lit in neon.
So time advanced and I gained more maturity, courage and money. And so I changed the important thing - the reliance on glasses. $6,000 of what the insurance company considers "cosmetic surgery".
Now that I no longer have the psychological shield of glasses, I feel my flaws even more. I look in the mirror to reassure myself that it's not "that bad." Just having that to deal with is, in the end, good for me. Otherwise, I could be full of ego about being so devastatingly handsome :). My truth is all of our truths: we are each a unique thing of beauty in this world, flaws and all. In fact, perhaps flaws most of all.
If you don't develop stereoscopic vision by the age of 5, you never will. Your brain can no longer develop the trick of merging two separate and slightly different images into a unified whole. I did not develop this trick, and so I have lacked stereo vision (I guess you would say I have monovision) my whole life. I look out of one eye, and the other is relegated to peripheral vision.
I started wearing bifocals at age 14. Trifocals came along in my early 40s.
So I finally said enough is enough. To be 100% dependent on glasses had come to be a terrifying thing. If I lost them or they became damaged, I would be incapacitated. I couldn't swim, snorkel or scuba dive.
As it turned out, I was far too farsighted to be a candidate for LASIK. So instead, I had intra-ocular lens transplants put in a month ago. This is the same procedure they follow for cataract surgery. They remove your crystalline lens (where cataracts grow) and replace it with what is essentially a contact lens in your eye. Funny, each one has a unique serial number. So I have now reached the age when my replacement parts have their own identifying numbers.
So the result? Spectacular! Having monovision has, for the only time in my life, turned out to have an advantage. My dominant left eye is slightly near-sighted now, and my weaker right eye is slightly far sighted. So I have not needed any glasses at all since the operation. From trifocals to no focals.
We all of us have things we hate about ourselves. And some of those things you can do something about, others you just can't. My eyes turned out to be both things. I have corrected the farsightedness, but I still have slightly crossed eyes and non-stereo vision.I have come to appreciate this birth defect. It helps me empathize with everybody, because I know that everybody has things they would change if they could. I remember seeing a man on the metro once. In profile, he was handsome, well dressed, well-groomed. But then he turned and I could see that half of his face was covered in a port wine stain. I am sure that this caused him great grief, as have my eyes, but I could also see that he had accepted what he was given; he carried himself with dignity and the knowledge that he was, in fact, handsome. So there's wisdom there - if you can't change something, learn to live with it, perhaps even embrace it as your distinguishing feature.
In my 30s, when I should have been looking at lens transplants, instead I was looking at further muscle surgery, to (hopefully) completely straighten my eyes out. But this would have come with great risk - they could have ended up worse, or I could have gone the other way and ended up wall-eyed. Even if perfect, there was a risk I would see double. I might be blinded in one or both eyes.
But back then (I can hardly believe it now) the only things that stopped me were a lack of money and fear of the actual surgery. What should have stopped me is common sense. But like everyone else, I look in the mirror and see flaws as if they are lit in neon.
So time advanced and I gained more maturity, courage and money. And so I changed the important thing - the reliance on glasses. $6,000 of what the insurance company considers "cosmetic surgery".
Now that I no longer have the psychological shield of glasses, I feel my flaws even more. I look in the mirror to reassure myself that it's not "that bad." Just having that to deal with is, in the end, good for me. Otherwise, I could be full of ego about being so devastatingly handsome :). My truth is all of our truths: we are each a unique thing of beauty in this world, flaws and all. In fact, perhaps flaws most of all.