Thanks Angel

I used to play racquetball. When I was 26 I got hit in the eye with a flying little blue orb. By the time I was 39 I had developed a cataract. I could no longer see the E at the top of the chart with my left eye. I have poor vision and have worn corrective lenses since I was ten. My right eye is even worse than my left. Except that now with a cataract, my good eye had turned into my bad eye. I had surgery and they put an implanted lens in and now I could not only see the E, but colors were magnificently bright.

However, I not only am very short-sighted (go ahead, my liberal friends, this is a good place to laugh). I will amend this to near-sighted and I have an astigmatism. That means that even with an implanted lens, I needed something else to correct the blurry, zigzag line thing. Since the age of 16 I have worn contacts. I wear the gas permeable or hard contacts.

After my surgery, I got contacts, but my vision as I said, was poor. In order to read anything, the eye works in mysterious ways. The lens of your eye flattens so that your eye can focus in a different way that allows you to read things close up rather than see things far away. When you have a cataract removed, they emulsify the lens of the eye and vacuum it out and replace it with a little winged disk. The disk does not flatten, it is flat. I couldn’t read at all with my left eye.

I wore reading glasses to read, but to just read something quick, like a price tag while shopping, I would close my left eye and read from my unaltered right one. I was winking all the time. Eventually I tried to get bifocal contacts, but the difference between what I need to see distance and what I need to read with my left eye is too great to make that possible in a contact lens. So I went to monovision contacts. My left eye is corrected (and since it is a long time since my surgery it is now corrected slightly for visual acuity and mostly still for astigmatism) and my right eye is for reading. It usually works.

Thursday my reading on the computer was difficult. I have been wearing contacts for nearly 40 years and I don’t do the heavy duty cleaning nightly. I’m lucky if I do that once a month. It’s worked for me. Usually if I’ve spent too much time on the computer, my contacts get foggy, but the regular solution I use at night makes everything okay. Friday morning I was having a heck of time seeing. I took out my right contact and did the heavy cleaning. I cannot then use it until it has soaked for four hours.

My vision without contacts is odd. I can see things in the distance but they are a little fuzzy because my mind doesn’t completely block out the very fuzzy right eye and there is the whole astigmatism issue. But I can function. To read, I have to have something about five to six inches from my face, but I don’t mind as long as I can read.

I got through the four hours and put my contact back in my eye. My vision still sucked. I tried working all day. At one point I even went so far as to get they eye doctor’s number out. But I didn’t complete the call. My vision was crappy. I had increased font size on my computer but it was horrible. I was confused, but … I was also able to read a book and get through my day.

It was finally bedtime. I always take out my right contact first, I did. Then I tried to take out my left contact. I couldn’t. Sometimes those little buggers move around. I worked for a good ten minutes trying to find a contact. Then it dawned on me why my vision was so horrible all day. I had lost my left contact. So I resigned myself to calling the eye doctor the next day. I looked down at the little throw rug in my bathroom and saw something shiny. It was my contact.

I don’t know how my guardian angel did that. It must have been there all day because I never did see clearly all day. I was in and out of the bathroom, as was the dog. And yet it was safe. I cleaned it with the heavy duty cleaner and soaked it overnight. It was ready and waiting for me in the morning. I actually got it in my eye and my vision cleared up tremendously.

Thanks angel.