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News (Making Progress)
For years I wore glasses or contact lenses and as I’ve gotten older and crustier I found I needed them all the time. It never really bothered me as you get into a routine – get up, lenses in, teeth in and off to work; get home, lenses out, teeth out, glasses on, sex bomb. Until, that is, I started a) riding a bike and b) going to rallies.I’ll start with the riding the bike problem. I have a very high astigmatism which, to the optically uneducated, means I have eyes shaped like rugby balls instead of footballs. The contact lenses I had to wear were called toric lenses and they are weighted (thicker) on one edge. This edge is marked so you can get them in the right way up. Now that’s bloody difficult for a start cos if you can’t see without the lenses, how the hell do they expect you to see 3 little marks on one edge? Anyway, if you don’t get them in the right way up (there could be a joke here about sailors and flat hats but we won’t go there) you can’t see a thing. Now these things tend to move a bit occasionally but no probs as I could just touch them and move them back. Until I started riding a bike. I don’t know whether it’s the vibration (yes, yes, yes) or my helmet squeezing my head out of all proportion but they would regularly slip. If it was just one then I could cope by seeing through the other eye and blinking rapidly to try and right the duff one. But if it was both then it was instant blindness and wherever I was, even on a motorway, I’d have to try and get to the side of the road, off gloves and spin them round (and my lenses). Shite. It got very dangerous at night – more stars in my eyes than Mathew Kelly.Now the rally problem. Providing I managed to find my way there and set up camp, there’s always the morning after problem. Have you ever tried to put in contact lenses when you’ve got a head like Birkenhead and you can’t find your eyes anyway? They’re somewhere down in the back of your head beneath a mesh of red blood vessels. After you’ve dropped the lenses a few times on your sleeping bag (without waking him up) and chased them round the canvas they feel like two rocks in your eyes.SO, I’d heard about this laser eye treatment and trawled the web for more info. My nearest (and cheapest) place was at West Quay Shopping Centre, Southampton. That worried me at first – I mean there it is amongst all the shops as if you can just pop in, get your eyes zapped, and carry on shopping. It’s actually a squeaky clean, professional place akin to going into a BUPA outpatients with professional staff and copious amounts of free tea and coffee (no vodka, damn). Now I’m very squeamish about eyes and you would not get me to watch any kind of eye surgery on TV and so when the surgical procedure was being explained I wanted to vomit so I won’t explain it here as vomit on the keyboard is difficult to clear up. I was also told that they usually did both eyes in the same session but I was too nervous for that and insisted on having them done 10 days apart.
As the day loomed I felt sick. The surgeon came to talk to me and was so comforting, with a soothing voice and lovely bedside manner that had he not been about 60 years old and looked like Dr Who he might have turned a girl’s head (apologies to the club oldies – you’re still dishy at 60+, honest). He gave me as much time as I wanted, told me to ask him anything I liked and if I wanted to I could just walk away right now. I was so reassured (or hypnotised) that I decided to go for it.
A surgical gown was put over my clothes, a shower cap like hat put over my hair and shoes (so fetching) and I walked into the “theatre”. It was actually quite a small room with a dentist type chair and a huge machine beside it. I was wheeled under it, drops put in my eye and told to look at a red spot of light. Two “things” were put in my eye to stop me blinking and I heard a couple of buzzing sounds. Wheeled out after 13 seconds. “Has something gone wrong?”, I said. “No, it went perfectly, all done” THIRTEEN SECONDS!! I didn’t feel a thing. A clear plastic shield was taped over my eye and that was it. I could see straight away too. Fifteen minutes later Jeff (my hubbie) was driving me home and I could read car number plates, road signs – marvellous. The shield had to stay on until the following morning when I had to go back for a check up and it was removed. I was given an eye test and could read the very bottom line on the chart (5 rows down from the one they try to achieve). I was elated. I still had to wear the shield, just for sleeping, for the next 7 days so that I didn’t accidentally rub it in my sleep.
Further check ups are at 1 week, 1 month, 3 months and 6 months after surgery so it’s a very comprehensive aftercare service. Needless to say, when I went back for my next eye to be zapped (having worn my glasses with one lens out for 10 days looking like some orphan, or moron) I was the cheerful one in the waiting room, telling everyone how quick and pain free it all is. This time, though, I was a bit unnerved when I heard the surgeon say, “We must get her absolutely straight under the laser – I’m very nervous about this high degree of astigmatism”. You are? I thought, I’ve just filled my pants. However, although this time it took longer (a whole 16 seconds), it was just as fantastic. I never even felt any discomfort in either eye once the anaesthetic drops had worn off.So now I have better than 20/20 vision, don’t need glasses or lenses, can see distance and read perfectly (yes, it taught me to read…) and I’m so elated I just had to write this long ditty to tell you all about it. It really has transformed my life. I can go to rallies and carry a hair dryer now cos there’s space in my panniers that used to be taken up by lens cleaners and saline (how that used to remind me of my days as a salty Wren sea dog). Trouble is, I’ve got no excuse now for my crap riding….There’s just one drawback – I can now focus on Jeff first thing in the morning and it’s not a pretty sight – but then he’s had to wake up next to me for years with my teeth out and curlers in (I look horrible with a mouthful of curlers)…. Ah, Love is blind.
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News (Making Progress) 
