miles and miles and miles....

At some point on Monday morning, someone is going to slice open the cornea on one of my eyes and then clamp a piece of plastic onto the front of my iris using tiny little claws. Strangely enough, I'm quite excited about this.... rather than being some form of Clockwork Orange-esque torture scene, over the next couple of weeks I will be undergoing corrective surgery on my eyes. Thanks to some fairly incompetent administrative support, I'm actually a little in the dark about the specifics of what is going to happen, but what I do know is that this procedure is going to be carried out by one of the world's leading specialists in this area, and that once the operation is complete, I should be able to see better out of that eye than I have ever done before in my life, with or without glasses or contact lenses. Who wouldn't be excited by that?

There are risks. Of course there are risks. Please don't think that I haven't thought about the risks and that I'm doing this blindly (pun intended) on some kind of a whim. I started wondering about having something done to my eyes several years ago, when my increasing frustration and anxiety over my inability to feel comfortable with my glasses really began to get me down. It was at that low point that I began the process of investigation and consultation that has led me to where I am now. It was only fourteen months ago that I was told by this eminent professor of opthalmology what he would recommend for my eyes. I thought that once I knew what was possible, it would be a simple decision, but in fact it took me about four months from there to actually cross the Rubicon and to commit myself to actually going ahead and getting this done.

I've done an awful lot of thinking about this and I have certainly not made the decision to go ahead lightly. It's ultimately a leap of faith, for sure, but I think I've done everything that I can to make as considered a decision as possible and to maximise my chances of success. I could lose an eye and it's possible that I might damage my eyesight permanently as a result of going through with this, but I think it is far, far more likely that I will improve my best corrected vision substantially and will finally be free of glasses and contact lenses. Perhaps I will need to wear glasses for reading or for detail work one day, or perhaps even immediately, but I think I can live with that.

I am going to have eye number one operated on in a couple of days time, and all being well, eye number two will follow a week on from that. I'm mildly apprehensive about the procedure itself, largely because of what I don't know about what will happen on the day or how I will feel immediately afterwards.... but basically I'm really excited at the thought that this could change my life.

I'm looking forward to the simple joy of being able to wake up and to be able to see without needing to fumble around for my glasses.

That's a pretty exciting thought.