Sight lines
A day or two after my cataract surgery I was looking at a relative and noticed he looked older. There were lines in his face I’d never seen before. It was alarming, because at first I thought there had been a sudden and abrupt aging process. But then I realized that it was just that I was seeing more clearly the details I hadn’t seen before, like when HDTV first came out.
Then the same thing happened with my own face in the mirror.
Initially I had figured it was because the surgery had been stressful. Then I thought it was because I wasn’t wearing eye makeup. Then I decided it was the extra-bright lighting in the bathroom that I was using as a guest.
Then I closed my left eye – the one with the new lens in it – and looked at myself in the mirror with my right eye. The lines disappeared, and I looked the way I had thought I looked all these years. Soft focus, lines blurred or erased.
Oh, well. It’s a small price to pay to be able to see better. But a disconcerting one.
You could just stick with the apple. 🙂
Keeping you in mind. Back home yet, or still in LA?
Art Deco:
Still out west and probably will be here for another two to three weeks. I plan to travel to visit various relatives. This was an unexpected trip, but might as well take advantage of being here. The weather’s been lovely, too.
Kate:
I’d need a watermelon.
Now, now, Neo. I use the eye concealer you recommended a couple of years ago, recently upgrading to the “industrial strength” version, and alas, the bags under my eyes are still there, just less noticeable. We’re still here, which so far beats the alternative.
Interesting. I didn’t notice that I looked older after cataract surgery– but I did notice when I looked in a mirror that my eyes are a deeper blue than I had remembered. It was the increased brightness of colors that was the greatest change for me post-surgery. The baseball game that I watched while waiting for my friend to drive me home from the eye clinic was the first revelation– I had forgotten how green the infield grass is, and how well the players’ numbers show up on their uniforms. Okay, it was a Mets game (not my home team), but I could cheer the Orange and Blue along with the Citi Field faithful in gratitude for my improved color vision.
Those lines get pretty hard to take/
When they are staring back at you.
Bonnie Riatt, Love in the Nick of Time. A Cornhead fav.
PA Cat:
For me the color change was hardly noticeable. For whatever reason, my color vision hadn’t degraded much at all. But my distance vision itself had gotten bad and eyeglasses only corrected it a tiny bit. I lived in a blurry world, although I could still basically see. But I couldn’t even read the rather large signs over the aisles in the supermarket until I was practically next to them. And road signs? No. Fortunately the GPS helped. As I said in some other thread, I plan to write a longer piece on what happened to me and why it was so hard to find a surgeon to correct it.
Kate:
Yes indeed, I’m grateful for many things.
But I’m still eyeing the watermelons in the market.
I just had my wife read your post Neo, because she had noticed the same thing right after her cataract surgery.
Neo–
My distance vision was also much better after cataract removal (like yours, it needed an upgrade), but the improved color perception was an additional help in reading roadway signage– especially the smaller street signs in my part of CT. Best of luck finding a nice watermelon (there should be plenty of them out West)– and being able to eat it afterward!
Yeah, the classic joke is that the lady went back to the surgeon after cataract surgery for a check-up. “How do you like your new vision?” the surgeon asked. “I hate it,” said the lady, “I used to think I looked pretty good for my age.”
Go for a honeydew. A watermelon would make you green on the outside and red inside (i.e., leftist), not your style at all.
Reminds me of a joke I heard years ago. It went something like this:
A small group of women of a certain age are having drinks together. One of them complains about how she is finding it more and more difficult to maintain her youthful complexion and how expensive the various treatments are. Others in the group chime in with their recommendations and complaints. Then the eldest member of the group shakes her head and says: “You don’t need all those fancy lotions! I find simple Vaseline works fine.” “Really? How do you use it?” “I apply a thin layer to my bathroom mirror every morning.”
My lens replacement of the other eye was two years after the first. It sounds like you are headed in that direction.
Don’t even consider one of those State Fair pumpkins!
I am glad to hear your vision is improved and recovery is going well!
I can empathize with your comment about the mirror. That is part of what prompted my question about a week ago about Covid and aging. I not only see it in my reflection, but in so many others. It really seems like the last year or two has taken a physical toll on most.
My wife has a mirror that sits on her end of the bathroom counter that I assume she uses for applying makeup (there are some things it is best a husband not know). You’ve all seen one. Circular mirror about 8″ across. One side standard, the other side magnified. Since my near vision isn’t what it used to be occasionally I’ll pick it up and use it to see something on my face more accurately. Is there something in my teeth? Any stray hairs growing on my ears? Sometimes I forget that I have my reading glasses on when I grab it and, Yikes! Double magnification!
I had my first cataract surgery about ten years ago when I was still examining military recruits. Part of the exam, of course, is with an ophthalmoscope. I was noticing all these kids with blurry lenses. Then I had a small Eureka moment. It was my lens that was blurry! A couple of years later, the other lens was getting blurry. When a real doctor uses an ophthalmoscope (not a movie doctor or TV doctor) he/she uses the right eye to examine the patient’s right eye and vice versa. It was my only criticism of the “Doc Martin ” TV series.
Neo: You’re still the same age. You just now realize you look your age. 😛
And, of course, glad to hear you are doing well, even if mildly disconcerted by/at the revelations it provides.
😉
Obloody:
Actually, I still think I look younger than my age – just by a considerably smaller margin.
This came up on the original, Covid aging thread. It truly seems like either adding some biotin to my daily vitamin regimen or being further out from my Covid recovery, or both, but my hair definitely seems to be coming back. It seems much improved to me and I recently had a hair cut and several people commented on my hair looking full (and they were not aware of my suspecting it had thinned post Covid).
So, biotin.
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
For me it was how things I thought were yellow turned out to be bright white after the first eye was done.
Neo, glad it went well. My view is that those lines are due to a defect in my lenses and not from my being old.
Wow. Glad this surgery worked out well for you Neo, truly glad. What you do and do so well is a gift to us all and we are glad this will help you do it better.
But at my age, the thought of getting a clean, clear look at that mug in the mirror is so unsettling as to almost make me shudder. I make it a practice to have the lights down low if I am anywhere near a mirror.
I can’t see the stars the way I used to, so that the Pleiades have become just a gauzy patch. I’ll take a few lines in the face in trade.
Neo, remember that we see with our brain, not our eyes. The eyes (natural or artificially assisted) only present the light to the retina cells (as we all know).
So if you are seeing more sharply, that should mean you are using your brain more sharply, too.
Now, to make us all geniuses, do they make telephoto cataract inserts?? 🙂
And for those of you who improved your color perception after cataract surgery, you can now say you are better able to see the character of people of color. You know, Barney, Shrek, ET, et al.
neo, you didn’t know what you were missing. It’ll be an adjustment but I think you’ll like it better.
When my grandmother was little she got glasses and for the first time she could see leaves on trees and she cried. For me it was the stars on the American flag, I had never seen them until I first got glasses.
I had years when I couldn’t afford to glasses and had to do without, and every time I got glasses again I was stunned by what I’d been missing out on.
Les, my previous set of glasses ended up with quite a few scratches because I was careless about using any cloth at hand to clean or wipe them.
Now, for my replacement set I am more careful to use lens cleaner and the designated micro-clothes intended for that purpose.
As a commenter at BillWhittle.com said: “Reality Is Not Optional”. So we need to remain clear sighted about looking for reality in both our physical and political environments.
Opps at 11:30: … telephoto lens inserts??
Happy to hear your surgery went well.