Seeing Things Differently

I had cataract surgery on my right eye on Thursday. I have been extremely near-sighted for most of my life, and so am experiencing things since Thursday that I never remember experiencing before. But everything is a little weird, because while my right eye has close to perfect vision, my left eye is still extremely near-sighted.

I have a contact lens that I can put in my left eye to make my eyes more similar to each other, but the contact makes my eye itchy and sore after hours of continuous use, so I have a bunch of hours where my brain is working overtime to coalesce the two disparate images my eyes are presenting to it.

I will have cataract surgery on my left eye in three weeks. Until then, despite the inconveniences, I am feeling particularly blessed. Once upon a time, cataract surgery meant the loss of the occluded lens, with very extreme trifocal lenses that did not offer great correction. On Thursday, a lens was implanted to take the place of my occluded lens, with 10.5 diopters of correction. Truly a miraculous event.

I woke up in the middle of the night on Thursday night (actually early Friday morning), and could see the clock on the nightstand and see what time it was. I'm not sure that information was particularly valuable, but it was cool as heck because it never happened to me before.

We live in miraculous times. There are a lot of problems in the world that can dominate our minds. There are challenges and heartaches. But there are so many amazing things happening.

A theme that guides my life is that we see what we look for. My cataract surgery has me seeing the amazing advances in medical technology that have greatly improved the quality of so many people's lives, including mine.