Originally posted 06.08.2005

Pre-op

Four hours from now, a half-hour after I’ve swallowed a Zanax, the corneas of both my eyes will be sliced and peeled back, reshaped, then laid into place where they will heal into permanent contact lenses.

Those of you who don’t know me very well may never have even seen me in glasses, cause I’m vain as hell. But I’ve needed visual correction since I was 10. Although my sight can be brought up to nearly 20/20 with glasses or contacts, without them I’m nearly helpless. The hand in front of my face starts to blur less than six inches from the end of my nose; street curbs are practically invisible, and slim trees appear entirely trunkless, their leafy heads floating like green clouds.

Dear readers, I cannot see the big E.

But that will change very soon, and although I’m excited and happy as a lark about this, there’s a pull of trepidation. Part of my identity will cease. My hand flopping about the nightstand to find my glasses, as though there were eyes at the end of my fingertips. The wall that glasses are between me and the rest of the world: sometimes a hindrance, sometimes a buffer. The sexless way I feel behind spectacles. The watch I wear to bed because I can’t see my alarm clock. The gestures of a lens wearer: sliding the contact over with a finger to even out a wrinkle, deftly pushing the glasses back up the nose (and covertly flipping someone off at the same time).

And then there is the Zen softness of my surroundings when I walk about unaided. For the last month or so, in preparation for the surgery, I’ve left my contacts mainly in their case and gone about all tasks in glasses. Needless to say, no strangers have flirted with me—the glasses are 12 years old, far past their expiration date for style, and they never looked that good on me to begin with. But I’ve played a bit with their convenience, the ease with which I can reveal the world to my naked eye. I’ve watched every detail of the Tea Lounge fuzz out, the track at Red Hook reduced to primary colors and simple shapes. It’s the ocular equivalent of putting in earplugs, something I do often to keep the external chaos of New York manageable.

I wonder how or if I would be different if my vision had remained eagle-eyed. How my personality was shaped by the ugly glasses I had as a kid and by the later prestige of owning contact lenses, how my parents understood that I truly needed them. The reputation I had for being geek smart: was it based on my vocabulary, or on my appearance? (It certainly wasn’t based on my grades.) The nights I didn’t stay somewhere because I had to take out my lenses. The clutter of solutions and cases and glasses in small overnight bags. The anxiety of not being able to see Power Point presentations at medical meetings because those conference rooms are so dry, squinting and wondering if I’m the only one. All the times I’ve heard, “you look smart in your glasses,” and wondering if that meant I look like an airhead without them.

Whatever. I can always get glasses without a correction. If I really feel the need to.


Post-op, Post Script.

When I awoke this morning, my eyes were fairly sealed shut by dried tears. They didn’t open easily, but when they did I could see my alarm clock in a bit of a haze. I looked like I was up until 4 a.m. crying and fell asleep in my contacts, and that’s sort of what it felt like.

Four hours later, however, there’s only a slight scratchiness and barely detectable swelling. The only thing noticeably odd are the small red “hickeys” left by the suction of the first part of the surgical process, but I wasn’t alarmed, as Dr. Coad told me to expect them.

I ran eight miles in the park, twice the figure-8, and as I ran I could feel the swelling of my eyelids diminish with the circulation of blood and fluids. It’s a humid day, and I suspect that some of the haze was atmospheric, but was immediately apparent to me what kind of clarity I can expect to emerge in the next day or two.

Crystal.