Thanks To LASIK: Was Blind But Now I See!

At my first eye exam, I couldn’t even see “The Big E,” much less which way it pointed. I had to get out of the chair and grope toward it.

Rx: powder blue fairy wing eyeglasses. Next came pink ones. Later, black, navy, brown and tortoise shell.

Within a few years, they were Coke bottle bottoms. My fate as a nerd was sealed. I even sported tape on my glasses quite often, because I broke them frequently: smashed them on a trampoline . . . stepped on them at the swimming pool . . . left them on the roof of our car to sail in highway breezes . . . .

Home movies of me waterskiing show me squinting desperately like Mr. Magoo in a bikini, trying to see where the water was and the shore wasn’t. Shaving my legs required contortionism to get my eyeballs close enough to avoid bloodshed. I was always afraid they’d go flying off while playing sports and riding roller coasters.

Though I wore contacts through my teens and 20s, dry eyes and astigmatism forced me back into glasses some time ago.

So you could say eyeglasses . . . framed my life.

Not any more.

I’m FREE! Halle-LOOOO-jah! AY-men! Can I get a WITNESS?!?

LASIK eye surgery brought me from the brink of legal blindness to 20/20 vision, at least for distance. Close-up sight in the right eye is still fuzzy, and I may need to go back for a tune-up. But man! I can see!

For years, I was afraid of LASIK. I once got all the way to the eve of surgery, but had to cancel when I developed a sty and discovered I was pregnant. That was quite a day! A friend solemnly decreed that the Lord was protecting my eyesight with those two interventions. Whoa! Well, I’ve never had a sty since, the other “intervention” is now 6, and many people were encouraging me to try again. So I did.

There was an omen the night before, though. We went out to eat, and the lights suddenly dimmed. AAAIIIEEE! Things are going black!

Then there was a tornado warning, minutes before my surgery. What if the building were sucked upward into a tornado’s spiral right when the surgeon was in mid-slice on my eyeballs?

But the staff put me at ease. They promised not to say “oops” or “uh oh” during the procedure. And no chain-saw sound effects, guaranteed.

The Valium was good. Very good. In fact, I may need to go back several times for fine tuning and have it again. SEVERAL times. I literally kissed my glasses goodbye and kept giggling on the table instead of holding still.

All I remember for sure was that the actual surgery only took a minute, giggle-free. And when the surgeon was replacing the flaps of my eyes, he said it was like squeegeeing a windshield at a car wash. I giggled again, for joy . . . because I could see!

I could see Maddy’s freckles! I could walk in the rain without speckles! I could read speed-limit signs! (Darn!)

I could read the newspaper; before, it was like a ball of fuzz without my glasses. I could see my face in the mirror without craning my neck one inch away.

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