A miracle happened on Monday. I can see!!! Like many of us who are required to wear glasses or contacts to be functioning members of society, I had been dreaming of laser eye surgery for years. But in the US, it has always been prohibitively expensive and is not covered by any health insurance that I was ever part of. I actually started the process last year. At the initial consultation, I was told that my left cornea was too thin in one place, which could either be a product of a naturally thin cornea or a byproduct of wearing contacts for many years. The only way to find out was for me to wear glasses straight for three months and come back for a re-test. Three months later, I returned to be told that it was in fact my contacts, and I was in fact a candidate for the surgery. However, in the intervening months, I had happily become pregnant, which meant that I would have to wait until at least a few weeks after giving birth to have the surgery - apparently, your vision can change during pregnancy, and even though it is often minor, surgeons will not operate for this reason while you are pregnant. And so it was that one of the first things I did after giving birth to Oliver was to schedule a new consultation at the Espace Nouvelle Vision in Paris. I had more or less worn glasses since the birth in the hopes that I would still be a candidate for surgery, and once I was told I was good to go, I started counting down the days until I was able to have the procedure. The surgery itself is only about 30 minutes. I will not lie and say that it is no big deal, because it's a bit like being abducted by friendly aliens and then discharged into a very bright, semi-blurry world (you can't see perfectly right away). After receiving anesthetic drops to remove any pain (yes, they work!), your eyes are suction-cupped with the laser onto one eyeball at a time. You have to hold perfectly still for 30 seconds while it does its laser thing (omg pressure!). The second part of the surgery is longer and still nerve-wracking while the surgeon does his thing with the scalpel. This sounds horrible, and objectively it kinda is, but honestly you don't feel anything, and the reward is waking up and SEEING for the rest of your life. In about 10 years I may need to have reading glasses, but the trade off is well worth it for me.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorBecause why not get married and move to Paris to really kick off your thirties? Archives
December 2016
|