Doctor My Eyes
Written and Performed by Jackson Browne
Doctor, my eyes have seen the years
And the slow parade of fears without crying
Now I want to understand
I have done all that I could
To see the evil and the good without hiding
You must help me if you can
Doctor, my eyes
Tell me what is wrong
Was I unwise to leave them open for so long
'Cause I have wandered through this world
As each moment has unfurled
I've been waiting to awaken from these dreams
People go just where they will
I never noticed them until I got this feeling
That it's later than it seems
Doctor, my eyes
Tell me what you see
I hear their cries
Just say if it's too late for me
Doctor, my eyes
Cannot see the sky
Is this the prize for having learned how not to cry
And the slow parade of fears without crying
Now I want to understand
I have done all that I could
To see the evil and the good without hiding
You must help me if you can
Doctor, my eyes
Tell me what is wrong
Was I unwise to leave them open for so long
'Cause I have wandered through this world
As each moment has unfurled
I've been waiting to awaken from these dreams
People go just where they will
I never noticed them until I got this feeling
That it's later than it seems
Doctor, my eyes
Tell me what you see
I hear their cries
Just say if it's too late for me
Doctor, my eyes
Cannot see the sky
Is this the prize for having learned how not to cry
I'm taking a detour from the timeline of my life this week because I realise I haven't been recording what is, and will continue to be, an important event to me: my upcoming cataract surgery. So, yes, this is a very literal song choice, and I had to mentally flip a coin between Doctor My Eyes and These Eyes by The Guess Who because I grew up on, and feel nostalgia for, both songs (and in the end, Jackson Browne won out because he has the doctor in there, too). I have always loved this song, so I'm happy to have found a spot for it (and yet, These Eyes is more fun to sing along to...).
I was maybe twelve when I got my first pair of glasses - which seems kind of old compared to other kids who need them; this was probably the first time I had ever had an eye test. Wearing the glasses home from the optometrist, I was dazzled by the sharpness: I had never before seen the individual leaves defined on a tree, or recognised the horizon as a solid line instead of a fuzzy transition, and I gazed with wonder on the passing, unblurred view from inside the car. I also remember that I wasn't really given a choice about what my glasses would look like - the medical assistant had put a pair on my face at the first appointment, made some adjustments, and sent them off for lenses - and I was too shy to ask her at what point I would be allowed to try on some others (perhaps my mother had asked for the cheapest option and I was cut out of the decision process to stay within her budget). So, as this was the late '70s, what I was given were large, plastic, owlish frames with heavy glass lenses, and no matter how dazzled I was by the vision they afforded, there wasn't much chance that I was going to wear them all the time. I certainly did bring the glasses to school - and couldn't believe the sharpness they brought to what was written on the board - but I was vain enough to only wear them for copying notes, popping them on and off as needed, feeling like a dork when they were on. And despite my eyesight only getting worse over the years, I still only wear my glasses when driving (after Kennedy was born and we moved back to Ontario, I tried to reinvent myself amongst strangers as more matronly - I got my hair cut short and began to wear my glasses full time - but neither affectation felt like me and I gave up both; maybe you need to start wearing glasses as a really young child for it to feel natural; I don't actually mind living in a soft focus world).
So, maybe ten years ago, I had a routine eye exam and the optometrist looked through his scope and said, "Someone has punched you in the eye". I assured him that no one has ever punched me in the eye, and he insisted that I had the beginnings of a "damage related" cataract, and that at some point, someone must have hit me in the eye. I then remembered that when Kennedy had been a baby, she bucked suddenly as I was reading her a picture book on my lap and the corner of the book had jabbed into my eye: Could that have caused this cataract? The doctor said that it didn't matter how, the important thing would be to monitor my fuzzy growth and pluck it when "ripened". And then began my years of dread.
I remember there was a commercial on TV once for Lasik that made me wince, and my niece Ella (maybe four at the time) asked me what was wrong. I told her that the idea of laser eye surgery freaked me out and always made me shudder, to which she replied, in that voice of stretched patience that she has always used on me (to my great amusement), "Auntie Krista, it's not like a couple of big guys are gonna pound on the door one night, and when you answer it, grab you and say, 'You're coming with us right now for laser eye surgery'. If you don't want it, don't get it." And she had a point. And yet.
My inlaws have both had successful and life-changing cataract surgeries (as has my mother, but she doesn't really talk about it), and have been asking me for years, "When are you having yours taken off?" And I can always reply, "It's being monitored. Since it's injury related, my cataract might be growing extra slowly. The doctor will decide when it's time." But it's not like I was going back for yearly checkups; primarily because I decided I didn't really like that optometrist.
So, last summer I went to a different eye doctor, and when he looked through his scope, he was alarmed: One of my eyes has a huge cataract, and while the vision in my other eye is severely near-sighted, it also has the beginning of a new cataract. When I offered what the other optometrist had said about the one being "damage related" and slow growing, the new doctor said there was no such thing. Cataracts are cataracts, and as I am barely legal to drive (!), he referred me immediately to an ophthalmologist for surgery. (Kennedy feels like she has been unfairly maligned for years - she for some reason thinks that I once accused her of hitting me in the eye with a book case (how??) - so my eternal apologies for ever believing that Kennedy damaged my vision when she was just a babe.)
Cataract surgery is big business here, so a referral in August meant that I didn't get to meet with the surgeon until October (and, of course, all I could think of was A Clockwork Orange and that scene above; about two big men pounding on my door and hauling me off for laser eye surgery). He also seemed alarmed by my weak vision and recommended taking off both cataracts at once; and despite thinking my case relatively extreme, he figured the waiting list wouldn't allow for my surgery before May. It's now late May, and my surgery has finally been confirmed for July.
I went the other day for my pre-op appointment. I was brought into an examination room for "measurements", and the medical assistant (MA) explained that I had two options: measurements could be taken manually, which is covered by the provincial health insurance (do I need to note that all of this is covered by our slow but feeless health care system?), or for $200 extra, I could have it done with lasers. The laser system was recommended as exponentially more precise, but that the manual system was certainly adequate. As Dave has benefits that cover extras like this, I went for the lasers. So after a brief put-your-chin-here-forehead-here-and-look-through-here routine test, the real fun began.
I was sitting on something like a dentist chair, and after having to scootch to the front edge of it to put-my-chin-and-rest-my-forehead on the machine, the MA spun my chair forty-five degrees, and telling me to stay at the forward edge, she lowered the back of it to beyond horizontal, and then told me to carefully lean back. It did have armrests for me to steady myself, but even with her hand gently supporting my back, it was definitely awkward to settle all the way back into the chair (and as the only other people in the waiting room were seniors like my inlaws and mother, I have no idea how they achieve these acrobatics).
The MA then put numbing drops into both my eyes and I know I tensed: Why would my eyes need to be numbed to "take measurements"? She then placed on my eye an object, kind of like a suction cup and nearly as big as the front surface of my eyeball - which necessitated fitting it under my eyelids - which was then filled with saline. She asked if I was okay - I know I was tensing and flinching - and all I could answer was, with an attempted laugh, "Is this what I'm paying extra for?" Once it was filled, the object started flashing a red light into my eye, and the MA kept telling me that I needed to look straight into the light and keep both eyes open, but as I could constantly see the light, I couldn't understand what I was doing wrong: it took a couple of minutes for her to get the measurements. When she removed the object, the saline ran down the side of my face (most of which she caught with a tissue), and then it was time for the other eye - doing my best to cooperate but tensing and flinching as the cup was fitted, once again, under my eyelids. (Incidentally, as she stretched the device across my face to reach the second eye, some wires dragged between my open lips and the MA laughed and said, "Did you get a good taste there?" I stifled a gag at the idea of all the faces and mouths those wires come into contact with; seems unlikely those wires get sterilised between appointments.) Once again, as the saline was filling and I was gripping the armrests, the MA asked if I was okay and I replied, "It's pretty terrible, but yes, I'm okay." The second eye only took a few seconds (because the cataract in that eye is smaller?), followed by the whoosh of the saline running down the other side of my face, being incompletely caught by the now wet tissue that had been used on the first side. As we were now finished, the MA asked me to pull myself back up to sitting: it wasn't all that hard, but no way one of those seniors in the waiting room could have - or should have - been expected to do that. Why wouldn't such a busy office have a proper dentist-type chair to raise and lower a body? I can't be the only person who is facing this experience with a lot of anxiety; why make it worse? (And note: While I was being "measured", Kennedy was in the waiting room, texting with Zach. He told her that the measurements for his laser eye surgery last summer involved poking at his eyeballs with a series of needles, so maybe my experience wasn't so bad after all. Whelp. I was certainly happy to have Kennedy there to drive me home, and as we watched so many middle-aged women in the waiting room being given the instructions for their elderly parents' upcoming surgeries as I waited to pay my $200 fee, I pointed out to Kennedy that this was only the beginning of her starting to take responsibility for my health care. To which the receptionist vigourously nodded her head without quite making eye contact with us.)
I'm going to need to take pretty much the whole month of July off of work - the eyes will be done two weeks apart and each take a couple of weeks to heal completely - but there are worse things than lounging around in July; we'll probably do a cottage rental that month while I'm off anyway. Talking about the surgeries at work, John (a 70-something former bookstore owner) said that his cataract surgery had changed his life for the infinitely better and didn't think I would actually need all that time off. Malena (a 20-something part timer) said, "Maybe I shouldn't tell you this, but my brother-in-law said that between his laser eye surgery and his vasectomy, the eyes were the more painful procedure. He couldn't stop crying from the pain and that just made the healing process worse." Gack. I understand that I'll be awake for the whole thing and I've been told that it's unsettling to experience the smell of your own eyeballs burning. Ick. It has been explained to me that while the artificial lenses the doctor inserts will give me perfect 20/20 vision at a distance - those defined leaves on the trees will be my new normal! - I will definitely need reading glasses to see anything up close; and how this will affect my job at the bookstore gives me pause: will I need to have glasses on a chain around my neck and constantly pop them on and off like I'm back in school again? Sigh. It will be what it will be; I do know that it can't be put off any longer.
I was maybe twelve when I got my first pair of glasses - which seems kind of old compared to other kids who need them; this was probably the first time I had ever had an eye test. Wearing the glasses home from the optometrist, I was dazzled by the sharpness: I had never before seen the individual leaves defined on a tree, or recognised the horizon as a solid line instead of a fuzzy transition, and I gazed with wonder on the passing, unblurred view from inside the car. I also remember that I wasn't really given a choice about what my glasses would look like - the medical assistant had put a pair on my face at the first appointment, made some adjustments, and sent them off for lenses - and I was too shy to ask her at what point I would be allowed to try on some others (perhaps my mother had asked for the cheapest option and I was cut out of the decision process to stay within her budget). So, as this was the late '70s, what I was given were large, plastic, owlish frames with heavy glass lenses, and no matter how dazzled I was by the vision they afforded, there wasn't much chance that I was going to wear them all the time. I certainly did bring the glasses to school - and couldn't believe the sharpness they brought to what was written on the board - but I was vain enough to only wear them for copying notes, popping them on and off as needed, feeling like a dork when they were on. And despite my eyesight only getting worse over the years, I still only wear my glasses when driving (after Kennedy was born and we moved back to Ontario, I tried to reinvent myself amongst strangers as more matronly - I got my hair cut short and began to wear my glasses full time - but neither affectation felt like me and I gave up both; maybe you need to start wearing glasses as a really young child for it to feel natural; I don't actually mind living in a soft focus world).
So, maybe ten years ago, I had a routine eye exam and the optometrist looked through his scope and said, "Someone has punched you in the eye". I assured him that no one has ever punched me in the eye, and he insisted that I had the beginnings of a "damage related" cataract, and that at some point, someone must have hit me in the eye. I then remembered that when Kennedy had been a baby, she bucked suddenly as I was reading her a picture book on my lap and the corner of the book had jabbed into my eye: Could that have caused this cataract? The doctor said that it didn't matter how, the important thing would be to monitor my fuzzy growth and pluck it when "ripened". And then began my years of dread.
I remember there was a commercial on TV once for Lasik that made me wince, and my niece Ella (maybe four at the time) asked me what was wrong. I told her that the idea of laser eye surgery freaked me out and always made me shudder, to which she replied, in that voice of stretched patience that she has always used on me (to my great amusement), "Auntie Krista, it's not like a couple of big guys are gonna pound on the door one night, and when you answer it, grab you and say, 'You're coming with us right now for laser eye surgery'. If you don't want it, don't get it." And she had a point. And yet.
My inlaws have both had successful and life-changing cataract surgeries (as has my mother, but she doesn't really talk about it), and have been asking me for years, "When are you having yours taken off?" And I can always reply, "It's being monitored. Since it's injury related, my cataract might be growing extra slowly. The doctor will decide when it's time." But it's not like I was going back for yearly checkups; primarily because I decided I didn't really like that optometrist.
So, last summer I went to a different eye doctor, and when he looked through his scope, he was alarmed: One of my eyes has a huge cataract, and while the vision in my other eye is severely near-sighted, it also has the beginning of a new cataract. When I offered what the other optometrist had said about the one being "damage related" and slow growing, the new doctor said there was no such thing. Cataracts are cataracts, and as I am barely legal to drive (!), he referred me immediately to an ophthalmologist for surgery. (Kennedy feels like she has been unfairly maligned for years - she for some reason thinks that I once accused her of hitting me in the eye with a book case (how??) - so my eternal apologies for ever believing that Kennedy damaged my vision when she was just a babe.)
Cataract surgery is big business here, so a referral in August meant that I didn't get to meet with the surgeon until October (and, of course, all I could think of was A Clockwork Orange and that scene above; about two big men pounding on my door and hauling me off for laser eye surgery). He also seemed alarmed by my weak vision and recommended taking off both cataracts at once; and despite thinking my case relatively extreme, he figured the waiting list wouldn't allow for my surgery before May. It's now late May, and my surgery has finally been confirmed for July.
I went the other day for my pre-op appointment. I was brought into an examination room for "measurements", and the medical assistant (MA) explained that I had two options: measurements could be taken manually, which is covered by the provincial health insurance (do I need to note that all of this is covered by our slow but feeless health care system?), or for $200 extra, I could have it done with lasers. The laser system was recommended as exponentially more precise, but that the manual system was certainly adequate. As Dave has benefits that cover extras like this, I went for the lasers. So after a brief put-your-chin-here-forehead-here-and-look-through-here routine test, the real fun began.
I was sitting on something like a dentist chair, and after having to scootch to the front edge of it to put-my-chin-and-rest-my-forehead on the machine, the MA spun my chair forty-five degrees, and telling me to stay at the forward edge, she lowered the back of it to beyond horizontal, and then told me to carefully lean back. It did have armrests for me to steady myself, but even with her hand gently supporting my back, it was definitely awkward to settle all the way back into the chair (and as the only other people in the waiting room were seniors like my inlaws and mother, I have no idea how they achieve these acrobatics).
The MA then put numbing drops into both my eyes and I know I tensed: Why would my eyes need to be numbed to "take measurements"? She then placed on my eye an object, kind of like a suction cup and nearly as big as the front surface of my eyeball - which necessitated fitting it under my eyelids - which was then filled with saline. She asked if I was okay - I know I was tensing and flinching - and all I could answer was, with an attempted laugh, "Is this what I'm paying extra for?" Once it was filled, the object started flashing a red light into my eye, and the MA kept telling me that I needed to look straight into the light and keep both eyes open, but as I could constantly see the light, I couldn't understand what I was doing wrong: it took a couple of minutes for her to get the measurements. When she removed the object, the saline ran down the side of my face (most of which she caught with a tissue), and then it was time for the other eye - doing my best to cooperate but tensing and flinching as the cup was fitted, once again, under my eyelids. (Incidentally, as she stretched the device across my face to reach the second eye, some wires dragged between my open lips and the MA laughed and said, "Did you get a good taste there?" I stifled a gag at the idea of all the faces and mouths those wires come into contact with; seems unlikely those wires get sterilised between appointments.) Once again, as the saline was filling and I was gripping the armrests, the MA asked if I was okay and I replied, "It's pretty terrible, but yes, I'm okay." The second eye only took a few seconds (because the cataract in that eye is smaller?), followed by the whoosh of the saline running down the other side of my face, being incompletely caught by the now wet tissue that had been used on the first side. As we were now finished, the MA asked me to pull myself back up to sitting: it wasn't all that hard, but no way one of those seniors in the waiting room could have - or should have - been expected to do that. Why wouldn't such a busy office have a proper dentist-type chair to raise and lower a body? I can't be the only person who is facing this experience with a lot of anxiety; why make it worse? (And note: While I was being "measured", Kennedy was in the waiting room, texting with Zach. He told her that the measurements for his laser eye surgery last summer involved poking at his eyeballs with a series of needles, so maybe my experience wasn't so bad after all. Whelp. I was certainly happy to have Kennedy there to drive me home, and as we watched so many middle-aged women in the waiting room being given the instructions for their elderly parents' upcoming surgeries as I waited to pay my $200 fee, I pointed out to Kennedy that this was only the beginning of her starting to take responsibility for my health care. To which the receptionist vigourously nodded her head without quite making eye contact with us.)
I'm going to need to take pretty much the whole month of July off of work - the eyes will be done two weeks apart and each take a couple of weeks to heal completely - but there are worse things than lounging around in July; we'll probably do a cottage rental that month while I'm off anyway. Talking about the surgeries at work, John (a 70-something former bookstore owner) said that his cataract surgery had changed his life for the infinitely better and didn't think I would actually need all that time off. Malena (a 20-something part timer) said, "Maybe I shouldn't tell you this, but my brother-in-law said that between his laser eye surgery and his vasectomy, the eyes were the more painful procedure. He couldn't stop crying from the pain and that just made the healing process worse." Gack. I understand that I'll be awake for the whole thing and I've been told that it's unsettling to experience the smell of your own eyeballs burning. Ick. It has been explained to me that while the artificial lenses the doctor inserts will give me perfect 20/20 vision at a distance - those defined leaves on the trees will be my new normal! - I will definitely need reading glasses to see anything up close; and how this will affect my job at the bookstore gives me pause: will I need to have glasses on a chain around my neck and constantly pop them on and off like I'm back in school again? Sigh. It will be what it will be; I do know that it can't be put off any longer.
Doctor, my eyes
Tell me what is wrong
Was I unwise to leave them open for so long
Tell me what is wrong
Was I unwise to leave them open for so long