Tag Archives: vision

My Husband, the Cyclops

etc., health, humor, , ,

Well, let me start by saying that, although in mythology a Cyclops is a being with one eye in the middle of its forehead, my husband doesn’t look like that. His eyes actually look fairly normal, except for the time the shop vac backfired and puffed a load of detritus into his face, irritating one eye. It was bloodshot and horrible, so we went to the ER. The doctor did not, alas, put a patch on his eye. (I have a thing for pirates. But I digress.)

But they’re not. He has something called monovision. Which, to me, sounds like what a Cyclops would have.

Our story begins in Dan’s childhood, lo these many years ago. One day his parents realized his eyesight was something less than ideal and took him to the eye doctor. When he came home with glasses, he exclaimed, “Look! Those people on the TV! They have faces!” It was the first of many revelations.

(My story is similar, except for the TV part. I got my first pair of glasses at age 3, and have worn them ever since. (Well, increasingly larger pairs, including cat’s-eye glasses back when they were popular in the early sixties.) I’ve never had contacts because even the idea of something touching my eye makes me want to hurl. But I digress again.)

So Dan continued wearing glasses and sometimes contacts until his doctor informed him just last year that he had cataracts bad enough that they needed fixing. (Again, the notion of someone attacking an eyeball with a scalpel nauseates me. But I digress yet again.)

Dan’s goal was never to have to wear glasses again. However, because of his astigmatism, Dan was told that, even after the cataract surgery, he would still need glasses for reading. Picturing himself with a librarian-style chain around his neck, Dan was desolate. (Besides, that would clash with the pendant he always wears of a peace sign with a piece of the authentic stage from Woodstock. But I digress some more.)

Anyway, Dan had his right eye done. As it healed, it turned out that this eye had great distance vision (20/20), while his left was still pretty good with close-up reading. This, the surgeon informed him, was called monovision, and he could sculpt the new lens so that Dan would have distance vision in the right eye and retain his close vision in the left. Dan was ecstatic and signed right up for the procedure.

(I remember reading somewhere that Ronald Reagan achieved the same effect by wearing a contact lens in one eye but not the other. With his close-vision eye, he could read his speech, and with the distance-vision eye, he could see the audience and how they were reacting. But I digress historically.)

Dan still had to wear glasses for a while, of course—dark glasses when he was out and about in the sunlight and safety glasses when he was rototilling or sawing. (I expected these would be clear plastic that wrapped around to the sides of his head. But no. They turned out to be ones with thick, black frames that I can only describe as birth control glasses. But I digress still more.)

So I was, as I so often am, wrong. Not a Cyclops. Just a guy with monovision. Still, it’s comforting to think of him driving around town with one eye on the road and the other one on the gas gauge. No, wait. I guess it really isn’t. But if he ever has to give a speech, he’ll be ready!

It’s All a Blur!

etc., family, funny things, health, humor, , ,

My history with eyeglasses goes way back—over 60 years, in fact. That being the fashion at the time and me being even then the opposite of a fashionista, I wore many pairs of cat-eye glasses.

My husband, Dan, was only a little older than I was when he got his first pair of glasses. Unlike me, he’s near-sighted. (I’m cross-eyed and far-sighted.) He always tells the story of how, once he had glasses, he said to his mother, “Look, Mommy. Those people on television have faces!” (Although we have different diagnoses, we both require Coke-bottle prescriptions. But I digress.)

By the time I was in high school (when I had at last graduated from cat-eye to aviator frames), all my classmates were wearing contacts, and losing them regularly. I was unable to follow suit because of being cross-eyed and, more importantly, because I can’t bear to even think about anything, including me, touching my eye. I recoil whenever there’s a commercial for a drug that requires an eye injection. (That’s true to this day—both the wireframes and the horror of anything touching my eye. But I digress again.)

When I was a child, I had an ophthalmologist, Dr. Saunders, who was the epitome of gentleness and kindness. When it was time for me to select my own eye doctor, I wanted someone with the same vibe. So of course, I went to Dr. Gary, whom I knew from being in the same martial arts class. (I figured that if he needed to touch my eye for any reason, he could at least subdue me first. But I digress yet again.) When I first visited his office, his partner glanced at me and exclaimed, “You’re a hyperope!” which is the technical term for far-sighted, I learned.

Over the years, both my husband and I have been through increasing thicknesses of eyewear and various styles of frames. After all these years, I still prefer wireframes and Dan has come around to my way of thinking. Bifocals were an eventual necessity and I opted for computer glasses as well, since I spend so much time online.

We’ve had a few eye-related emergencies over the years. Mine occurred when I set off a flea bomb in the house and accidentally bombed my face. Fortunately, my glasses offered some protection and there was a bottle of distilled water nearby. Suddenly, I wasn’t so worried about something touching my eyes as Dan held them open and poured.

Dan’s extreme eye occurrence happened when he was driving. All of a sudden, he saw a flash in his right eye, and the vision in that eye became blurry. The next day, he had small, dark pinpoints in his right eye’s field of vision.

A quick trip to Dr. Gary seemed necessary. Dan learned that he had experienced an age-related phenomenon that affects the vitreous fluid in his eye. This information gave me the willies, of course, but Dan took it all in stride. The flash didn’t return and Dan named the largest of the floating points in his eye. He called it “Freddie the Free-Floater.” (Any Red Skelton fans out there? But I digress even more.)

I’m preparing myself for the day when I also see that flash and the dark points in my vitreous fluid. I don’t think I can come up with a better name for them, though. Dan surely wins on that count.