I saw my eye doctor two weeks ago, expecting to get a new eyeglass prescription (I've had the current ones since early 2016, before I left Seattle). Instead, he told me I should schedule cataract surgery for some time in the next year.
I have had a couple of conversations with his surgical coordinator, and am probably going to schedule the surgery for late February and early March. They do one eye at a time, but prefer to do them fairly close together, so the patient doesn't spend too long in an in-between state when the glasses that are appropriate for the not-yet-treated eye are no longer right for the one where the cataract has been removed.
In those conversations, I found out that the "don't look down while you're healing" part of the aftercare instructions applies to things like looking under the sink; I should be fine brushing my teeth or looking at a book or my keyboard. (I may stay close to home, though, because while looking at the ground while walking should be okay, retying a loose shoelace sounds problematic, and I'm not going out in sandals in winter.
I'll have to go out to Lexington or Concord to have measurements done before the surgery, and then Waltham and Chelmsford for the surgery. For reasons that they didn't explain, he does cataract surgery in Waltham on the second Tuesday of each month, and in Chelmsford on the third Wednesdays, so having both eyes done in the same place means a longer wait between operations.
I do not want to discuss the surgery itself, because I would rather not think about it. I am going to think about logistics (like whether![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
cattitude, adrian_turtle, or both will be there at the surgery to be the competent adult of my choosing (as Cattitude's oral surgeon put it) to get me safely home after the operation. I will also need to make an (extra) appointment with my GP, for her to check/confirm that it's okay for me to have the surgery, which has to be done no more than 30 days before the surgery.
I know this is very routine outpatient surgery, and I go home the same day. I'm still nervous, which is an argument for having the surgery relatively soon. "Relatively" because he's booked up through January, and I want to go to Boskone, and don't think scheduling surgery for the Tuesday before the con would be sensible. I think the nervousness is because surgery, because eyes, and because it will be a change, though hopefully a very good one. I don't expect not to need glasses, but am hoping that I will have a simpler prescription—and even if I still have near-sightedness, far-sightedness, and astigmatism, I won't have the cataracts blocking areas of my vision. (It doesn't matter how carefully I clean my glasses, that's not where the spots are.)
(Back in Seattle, my eye doctor said I had "incipient" cataracts. When I first saw Dr. Lazarra, he said they weren't "incipient" (I think partly he thought it was an unhelpful term in general), but that the appropriate thing to do at the time was to wait. So I knew this was in my future, but wasn't expecting it this soon.)
I have had a couple of conversations with his surgical coordinator, and am probably going to schedule the surgery for late February and early March. They do one eye at a time, but prefer to do them fairly close together, so the patient doesn't spend too long in an in-between state when the glasses that are appropriate for the not-yet-treated eye are no longer right for the one where the cataract has been removed.
In those conversations, I found out that the "don't look down while you're healing" part of the aftercare instructions applies to things like looking under the sink; I should be fine brushing my teeth or looking at a book or my keyboard. (I may stay close to home, though, because while looking at the ground while walking should be okay, retying a loose shoelace sounds problematic, and I'm not going out in sandals in winter.
I'll have to go out to Lexington or Concord to have measurements done before the surgery, and then Waltham and Chelmsford for the surgery. For reasons that they didn't explain, he does cataract surgery in Waltham on the second Tuesday of each month, and in Chelmsford on the third Wednesdays, so having both eyes done in the same place means a longer wait between operations.
I do not want to discuss the surgery itself, because I would rather not think about it. I am going to think about logistics (like whether
cattitude, adrian_turtle, or both will be there at the surgery to be the competent adult of my choosing (as Cattitude's oral surgeon put it) to get me safely home after the operation. I will also need to make an (extra) appointment with my GP, for her to check/confirm that it's okay for me to have the surgery, which has to be done no more than 30 days before the surgery.I know this is very routine outpatient surgery, and I go home the same day. I'm still nervous, which is an argument for having the surgery relatively soon. "Relatively" because he's booked up through January, and I want to go to Boskone, and don't think scheduling surgery for the Tuesday before the con would be sensible. I think the nervousness is because surgery, because eyes, and because it will be a change, though hopefully a very good one. I don't expect not to need glasses, but am hoping that I will have a simpler prescription—and even if I still have near-sightedness, far-sightedness, and astigmatism, I won't have the cataracts blocking areas of my vision. (It doesn't matter how carefully I clean my glasses, that's not where the spots are.)
(Back in Seattle, my eye doctor said I had "incipient" cataracts. When I first saw Dr. Lazarra, he said they weren't "incipient" (I think partly he thought it was an unhelpful term in general), but that the appropriate thing to do at the time was to wait. So I knew this was in my future, but wasn't expecting it this soon.)
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