NathanRising

I had an eye doctor appointment last week because I’ve been having multiple headaches a day. Come to find out, I need glasses for computer work, reading, and basically anything close up. See, I was born legally blind. As in, you know that big giant “E” on the eye charts? I could not see that. My left eye was 20/800 and my right eye was 20/300. So at the tender age of three, I started wearing really thick glasses and an eye patch over my right eye to strengthen my left eye.

You can imagine how badly I was bullied in school because of it. Imagine this. A cute, skinny, smart little blond kid wearing coke-bottle glasses and a black eye patch. That was me. And yeah, I got to where I wouldn’t wear my patch, so then….. are you ready for this?….. my parents had to put MASKING TAPE over the lens on the right side of my glasses. I don’t blame them because it was imperative that I use my left eye while I was so young because if I did not, it would never improve.

So then I got to where I wouldn’t even wear my glasses. The bullying was intolerable. I would take them off, then I wouldn’t be able to see well enough to find them and I would end up either sitting on them or stepping on them. I can’t even tell you how many pairs of glasses I broke (or lost!), and my parents were constantly replacing them.

Finally, in high school, I still refused to wear my glasses but my eye doctor didn’t recommend contacts for anyone under the age of 15. Not only that, but my vision was so bad that contacts were not nearly as beneficial as glasses. I had astigmatisms in both my eyes, which also didn’t help my case for contacts. But finally, once I turned 15, my parents succumbed to my pleas and let me wear contacts.

So up until my 2004, when I was 23 years old, I wore contacts. At that time, my grandfather, Papa, had his cataracts removed and was so amazed by how well he could see, the first person he thought of was me. So he bought me LASIK surgery for both of my eyes. However, I was warned by the doctor that my vision was so bad and I was so extremely far-sighted that they wouldn’t be able to perfect my vision. They would be able to fix most of my far-sightedness, but some of it would remain. I didn’t care. I just wanted to be able to see.

I ended up having two surgeries. I had both eyes done in summer of  ’04, and then in the summer of  ’05, I had another surgery on my left eye to refine my vision. It brought my vision up to about 20/40 in BOTH OF MY EYES. That means that without contacts or glasses, I COULD SEE OUT OF MY LEFT EYE. And I could see better of out both of my eyes then I ever could with glasses or contacts.

I never thought I would see the day that would happen.

They told me over the next year or so, my vision would fluctuate a bit. And I’ve been doing great after the surgery with the exception of recently, I started having headaches and noticed I was straining pretty hard to read, especially when on the computer. So when I went to the eye doctor, I still have 20/30 vision but some of my far-sightedness has remained, hence the need for reading glasses.

I’m totally cool with that.

I even picked out some super cute glasses. We should be able to get them in a couple weeks or so, and hopefully it will help with my headaches. The picture below was of me right after my first surgery in 2004.  They taped some clear protective lenses over my eyes because they didn’t want to risk me getting anything in them or inadvertently rubbing them until they had healed. You can tell I wasn’t feeling my best, but I was just so happy to have the opportunity to see again that it outweighed any physical discomforts I had.