Sally Breslin: My Life: CATARACT SURGERY...BEWARE OF MIRRORS!

As I write this, it has been exactly two weeks since I had cataract surgery on my right eye…and exactly one week until I have surgery on my left.

After my previous surgery, my follow-up exam was scheduled for 2:00 that same afternoon at a clinic in Manchester, so my friend Dot (who’d been kind enough to drive me everywhere that day) and I had a couple hours to kill until that appointment. We rode around the "big city" for a while, checking out the places we remembered from years ago…many years ago.

The first thing I noticed was how bright the colors were. My cataracts had made everything look a brownish, yucky color, so with one of them removed, one eye was seeing white as a bright, gleaming white, while the other still was seeing it as tan. It was a weird feeling.

The second thing I noticed was how many potholes and bumps had cropped up in the streets and alleys in the city over the years. One bump was so bad, if I hadn’t been wearing my seatbelt, I probably would have hit the top of my head – which I had been instructed to keep as still as possible until the implanted lens in my eye had sufficient time to settle in place. After that bump, however, I was pretty sure my lens was somewhere up in my sinus cavity.

By 12:45 we’d had our fill of sightseeing (cruisin'?), so Dot and I headed to the clinic for my follow-up, figuring we’d just relax in the air-conditioned waiting room for the next hour or so. But shortly after we arrived, I was called in.

I was asked to read the eye chart…which had been my nemesis for years. I always felt fortunate when I even was able to read the giant “E" at the top, because everything usually went downhill after that and most of the letters pretty much were guesswork on my part.

But there I was, suddenly reading line after line and calling out letters I’d never even seen on that chart before.

“Great!” The woman who gave me the exam said. “You're nearly at 20/20 in that eye now, and it will continue to get even better as it heals.”

“What was my vision before the surgery?" I asked. I’d never really known because all my optometrist would say to me after each exam was, "Get those cataracts removed or you won't pass your eye exam when you have to renew your driver's license.”

The woman looked at my information on the computer screen and said, “Before this, your vision was 20/70, but that was with glasses.”

I hadn’t expected it to be that bad. I mean, when I went out for my walks every day, I never bothered to wear my glasses. But now I'm wondering how I ever managed to find my way back home.

The surgeon dilated my eye and examined it.

“Good news!” she said. “Everything looks just fine. The lens is perfectly positioned, there’s no inflammation or redness, and your eye pressure is normal. All you have to do now is go home, relax and make sure you follow the rules.”

THE RULES

No bending at the waist – use your knees and squat down instead.

No heavy lifting.

No face makeup, especially on the eyes.

No getting water in the eye while showering or washing your face or hair.

No swimming.

No exercising other than a slow walk or stroll.

No rubbing the eye.

Wear a plastic eye-guard to bed every night for at least the first week.

Put the prescribed drops into your eyes daily at breakfast, lunch, dinner and bedtime.

Don’t do anything that might increase the pressure in your eye.

Don’t do any housework - especially dusting or vacuuming.

Wear sunglasses outside to protect the eye from sunlight, wind, dust and pollen.

Call the office if you experience severe pain or any redness, swelling or discharge.

When I finally got home, I rushed to the big mirror in the bathroom to see what I looked like...and gasped. What I saw in the reflection horrified me!

Oh, the eye looked and felt great, perfectly normal, as if no one even had touched it. But who, I wondered, was that old hag with the winkled face covered with old-age spots looking back at me? Being able to see so clearly made me age about 20 years in just one day. All of my flaws were so defined without the cataract to blur them, they practically leapt out at me, taunting me. I even was able to spot a big cobweb on the bathroom ceiling above the mirror, which was embarrassing. It could have been hanging there for months, even years, for all I knew.

I have to admit that trying to follow the rules hasn’t been easy for me. The day of my surgery, my dogs knocked over their water bowl, shed enough fur to stuff a pillow, and went outside and rolled in the dirt, then came inside and shook it off. The “no bending” and “no housework” rules made me wonder how I was supposed to clean up the mess. I had visions of my house looking like the town’s landfill by the end of the first week.

Then, let’s face it, at my age, trying to do squats instead of bending over to pick up something is a recipe for disaster. Once I squat down, I can’t stand up straight again unless I have a death grip on something (or someone) to help pull myself up.

Not wearing makeup is difficult, too, because without it, I look as if I’ve been embalmed (or I should be!).

Also, trying to administer the eye drops on a regular schedule has been a real challenge because I’m nocturnal and I never eat breakfast or lunch. Bedtime for me is about 9:00 in the morning and I sleep until 4:00 in the afternoon.

But the surgeon gave me a chart where I have to fill in the times I insert the drops. My chart looks something like this:

BREAKFAST – 4:15 PM

LUNCH – 10:00 PM

DINNER – 3:55 AM

BEDTIME – 9:15 AM

Anyone who reads it will think I don’t know the difference between AM and PM.

I hate to say it, but every time I read the rule about not doing anything to cause pressure in the eye, the only thing I can think of is suffering from a severe case of constipation and straining until my eyes pop. It makes me want to rush out and stock up on Metamucil, just to be safe.

But unfortunately, I can’t rush out anywhere because having one crystal-clear eye now and one foggy brownish one has messed up my depth perception. I didn’t really notice it, however, until I took a trial run in my car a week after the surgery to test my new vision while behind the wheel. As a precaution, I just drove up and down my long driveway, not out on an actual road.

I did pretty well...until I had to drive the car back into the garage.

As I approached, the doorway began to resemble something from one of those abstract Picasso paintings. It looked lopsided, seemed much too small for my car to fit through, and one side of the door frame appeared much closer to me than the other side.

I’d driven my car through that garage doorway so many times without any problems over the years, I figured I could do it with my eyes closed. But the loud crunching and scraping noises that followed my attempt told me I was wrong. The victim of my failed attempt was the mirror on the passenger's side, which was scraped and dangling. I managed to snap it back into place, but when I tried to adjust it to its regular position, it fell off again. So I shoved it back in and decided not to touch it again any time soon.

MY VICTIM!

The surgeon assured me I won’t have the garage-door problem any more, once I have the surgery on my left eye.

So I’m eager to get it over and done with…although I’ll probably avoid looking into mirrors for a long time afterwards.

With clear vision in both eyes, I’m guessing I’ll see a reflection that looks about 104 years old…and embalmed.

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Sally Breslin is an award-winning syndicated humor columnist who has written regularly for newspapers and magazines all of her adult life. She is the author of several novels in a variety of genres, from humor and romance to science-fiction. Contact her at: sillysally@att.net

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