Continuing on from last time…

It turns out the opthalmologist didn’t offer the lens I wanted – Johnson and Johnson’s Tecnis Odyssey – so I found myself out of my comfort zone window shopping for doctors. I usually just go with the first viable option, but this is an important decision and there’s no external time pressure so I’m forcing myself to not simply settle.

In the end, though, this “window shopping” still only resulted in three phone calls. The first didn’t offer the lens, but the second did. However, after waiting a month for an appointment with this second clinic, we immediately discovered that they weren’t experienced with it. She was willing to try if I wanted, but I opted to look into the list of other doctors in the area that she recommended. And the first name on that list responded positively that they both had the lens and plenty of practice implanting it. They even had an available time slot to consult that very day, so I was slightly less annoyed at the botched second appointment.

When I arrived at the third appointment, they went through a full evaulation while I cautiously checked – multiple times – that they for realsies knew all about the Odyssey and I wasn’t wasting everyone’s time.

While waiting post-dilation for the ophthalmologist, I got bored of ignoring my phone and tried cranking the font size to max to make it readable. It was very interesting because, contrary to expectations, my right eye went from its normal blurriness to a kind of crisp diagonal double vision. Combined with the left eye’s mild dilation-induced inability to focus, reading text was like looking through a kaleidoscope: three overlapping copies of every letter. It made the long wait much more amusing.

This third and final doctor is much more of a character than the previous two. He started out asking why I was even there, which made me stutter out a justification, as if I had been tricked into coming. But he was actually just questioning how I could develop cataracts at such a young age. He took a look and started listing off numbers to the assistant, describing the locations and severity of everything. We confirmed that the Odyssey is not only the best option, but the only one he would suggest for me.

Exactly what I was hoping for. Let’s proceed.

But first, did I suffer from dry eye? I wouldn’t have thought so, but he poked around and took a picture to show me how bad things were. I hadn’t known how the eye’s tear film worked before, but now I do and it’s like I can hear my bones creaking again.

You see, the first point of contact for light entering the eye isn’t the cornea or lens, but the tear film coating the surface of your eyes. But if the glands producing this film grow weak from disuse or age they can atrophy, never to grow back again. This leads to dry eye, and without a good tear film your vision will get blurry.

In the case of a multifocal implant, he said a poor tear film can also worsen the halo effect. So he started me on a regimen of fish oil and warm eye compresses, which is quite nice regardless.

The combination of dry eye treatments, measurements, and time to order the lens led to a surgery date of May 8th for the first eye, and the second on the 22nd.

So today I paid $3750 for the first lens (insurance is never involved for the premium implants), and hopefully tomorrow I’ll find out the specific timeslot so I can hire a designated driver.

I always find the inexorable flow of time interesting in moments like this. Two years of slowly worsening eyesight, four months of intermittent appointments, and in only three days I’ll have a partially new eye.