Monday, May 21, 2012

On a clear day, you can see forever…(well, let’s hope so)

Today we went to get our exams, to see if we are candidates for Lasik eye surgery. The two hours we spent there consisted of eye tests, measurements of the thickness of our corneas, imaging of our eye, checking the blood supply and various things inside our eye. Oh and they dilated our pupils. For the last eight hours, Linda and I have felt like vampires, hiding from the daylight. I feel like I’ve pulled an all nighter, in college, cramming for a test..having downed ten cans of red bull. Wow, it’s been intense. It’s all worth it though…we are candidates and we’ll have it done Friday afternoon and rest over the holiday weekend.

I’ve been leery of this type of surgery for a few years but after I saw my former boss, who had it done, it calmed my fears about blinding outcomes from scar tissue, etc. I researched optometrists, who specialize in Lasik, and found that Dr. Cutarelli, a renowned Lasik surgeon has an office in Denver. Called and got appointments for when we’d be here and there you have it. You’re caught up.

As Linda and I have heard from people who have had this surgery, you typically need reading glasses after the surgery but Dr. Cutarelli explained to us that there is Mono Vision Lasik surgery where one eye is corrected for reading and one is corrected for distance. The two eyes, in conjunction with the brain, interpret and adapt to this so you see everything perfectly. In his practice he has the most up to date equipment out there. He uses a Wavelight laser which actually improves night vision…other laser equipment can’t. We’re excited. We’ll drive the motorhome to his office and park in the big parking lot and hang out there for 24 hours till it’s safe to drive back to the campground. We’ll be given solar eclipse style sunglasses that will block out the light and we’ll go retire to our rig.

I think it will take a while for it to sink in that we don’t have glasses sitting on our faces anymore. I mean when you add up all the years that Linda and I have worn glasses, you’re talking around 85 years. Holy cow, that’s a lifetime of broken frames from wrestling with a little brother, glasses askew trying to get them into our helmets, scratched lens that drive us crazy, a multitude of lost and not so lost sunglasses bought for the specific frame shape that we have and countless name calling when I first started to wear glasses in the fifth grade. On the coffee tables, outside the surgical area of Dr. Cutarelli’s office, are two big glass jars with pairs of discarded glasses. FREEDOM is within our grasp….my glasses might join those other pairs. We’ll give you an update this weekend after we’ve had it done.

In other blinding news, the solar eclipse was really cool. We were at Linda’s reiki session when it began. She watched it during our motorcycle ride home (45 minutes in length) and would give me the solar sunglasses to look through when we were stopped at a red light. I’m sure the people around us were wondering what we were doing. Just as the “ring of fire” was about to happen, the sun went behind a cloud and was not to be seen again. As the sun got closer to setting, the sky behind the cloud looked like the sun had imploded. The sky was  beautiful, all pink and bright behind the cloud.

Linda had a good reiki session. For those who have asked, it was a present from me. I have experienced reiki in the past and it had some amazing results. I have gone through reiki training but am only at Level 1. Although I have done reiki on her, I’ve not had the training to be able to do it effectively to others. That takes much more training. The woman I took her to is a Reiki Master (having gone through 3 levels) and she also has other extensive training.

It’s been a week of great energy and new discoveries. Here’s wishing that you all have a great week too !

2 comments:

Bear and Butterfly said...

Sound exciting wish I was a candidate.
FYI as a Colorado native I DO look at the mountains almost daily!

Bobbie and Jim said...

Anxious to her how your Lasik goes for you two.