Not really.. but.. the change is astonishing.. beyond comprehension really.
The nuts and bolts so far, is that out of my right eye I can see 20/25 at distance, mid, and close range. The doctor said that is an exceptional result for the first day. I do have some visual anomalies, but the doc said that is the result of the medications that haven't worn off yet. I'm kind of seeing double and have a smearing effect. The weird stuff should resolve soon.
The difference between my left eye (still with the cataract in it) and my new right eye is unreal. I can see the color white as white now, and it's brilliant. Before, I was seeing color as if I was caught in a sand storm.. everything tinted to a brownish color. Colors are so vibrant and rich. I had no idea the world looked like this.. or at least I haven't seen it this way in a really long time.
I'm also seeing in ultra-high definition now as well. My first impression is that I look older than I thought I did. Everything used to be smoothed out before.. now I can see the rawness of each little detail. I can see individual pixels on this monitor. When I look in the mirror, I can see the pores in my skin, and the winkles around my eyes (they really aren't that bad).
Looking just out my left eye now, it seems like I'm blind. I had just become used to that world. After the cataract in that eye is removed, combining this brilliance I'm seeing out of my right eye might itself be blinding.
Hopefully my left eye turns out this well, and my vision settles to where I don't notice anything odd.
It really is amazing.
4 comments:
Is this a congenital thing with your family? Seems like you'd be on very young end of the spectrum for most cataracts.
One doctor I saw quite a while back said he thought it was congenital, but very very slow growing. The recent doctor doesn't think it's congenital because they have a different character to them when they are congenital versus post-birth developed, and quite often cause other distortions in the capsular bag which prevents lens replacement.
You've probably seen kids with massive glasses.. that's thick congenital cataracts that are subsequently removed but not replaced with a new lens implant, hence the thick lenses in the glasses.
I think the odds of congenital cataracts are something like 3 in 10,000, which is pretty low.
Thing is, with me.. they've been such slow growing it's like the frog in a boiling pot of water analogy. I think in my early 20's I probably had fairly normal perceptions of color and vibrancy.. and details.. and steadily that has decreased leaving me to think at any point in time, that's how the world just looked.. to everybody. Before my surgery, other then having problems any near sighted person might have, I thought what I was seeing is how it is.
Holy fuck shit is very saturated with color, really really intense colors and detail and texture. I was just looking out the window and I can see the individual squares of the window screen thing. I had no idea there was even a window screen on those windows.
My eye is going to be dilated for 10 days, because they want me on a drug that paralyzes the accomodating muscle which flexes your natural lens in order to focus from distance to near. They want my new lens to heal and fuse with that muscle, so when I'm off the drug and the muscle moves and flexes to focus near, it causes my implanted lens to flex just like a real lens.
Having a dialated eye is naturally making things super bright, and I'm still seeing a lot of abberations. I went outside last night and looked at the moon, and it nearly blinded me it was so bright.
I guess some people just develop cataracts early. I was talking to Picarde the other day, and she had surgery also at a early age (older than me though). There is an upside to the deal though. Most people when they hit 40 start losing the ability to focus near because the lens becomes more rigid with age and the accomodating muscle can't flex it, hence the reading glasses most use. I won't need them. I'm already seeing 20/25 near, and that'll get better when the lens starts focusing and the aberrations go away.. and I'm actually using both eyes.
I can't really can't articulate well enough how different everything is. There's a huge flood of details that I didn't realize existed.
Do you know what kind of surgery they did? Apparently there are about 4 types. One uses ultrasonic to liquify part of the lense, the other uses liquid nitrogen to freeze the whole thing and take it out, and the other two use incisions to take out part or all of the lense?
Sorry, just looking it up is leading me deeper into wikipedia.
Don't know for sure. The only type I was aware of was the ultrasound, so just assumed that's what they did.
The anesthesia is really some weird shit.
Post a Comment