How are your balls? Rated G

A short story about Eyeballs.

Lately, I have noticed things getting a little fuzzy! (not my balls……..my vision) I need my glasses again.

I went back to work for Lockheed in 1988, and I had to start wearing glasses. I needed bi-focals so I could look up to see who’s coming, and down to see what I was writing. I hated them, because I had to take them off to look through a telescope, roughly 3 hours of every day. So, they were on and off hundreds of times a day, until my nose was sore. When I leaned forward, they would fall off my face, and smack down on the concrete floor, pb&j side down! My dear friend, Bobby Ryckman, (RIP) made a string with loops to attach to my bows, and hung them around my neck, and it made life so much better!

I went on, this way, until around 2005, when I noticed a distortion in my left eye. Straight lines had an enormous bulge, and I had to close that eye to see certain things clearly. I still have my original glasses, the ones I dropped, ten thousand times, and, they are horribly scratched. No insurance until 2008, and I went to optometrist, immediately! He said I had a macular pucker, and it needed “plucking” to take the curve out of my straight lines.

This is going to sound like science fiction, plucking a pucker! First, an illustration.

When I was in twilight sleep for surgery, I became conscious enough to ask if the pucker was caused from looking through a telescope, hours a day, for over 25 years. He said no, but I don’t believe it. Had the pucker been in the right eye, I could have believed, but I don’t think he realized that a very bright light, used for colliminating, was constantly blazing my left eye for hours a day, every day.

I wore a patch for the longest time, and when it came off, my vision was very blurry. It kept getting worse. I went to Denise’s OP, and he did cataract surgery, and a 21 diopter lens implant. More illustrations, but first a Youtube video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaAcqYn-Teo

My eyesight was so much improved, I stopped wearing my glasses. But, then it got bad again, and I was starting to think I should have put up with the pucker. 😊

When I went for my driver’s license, I couldn’t read the chart with my left eye. Fearing the worst, I asked if people, blind in one eye, could get a license, and they said yes, but had to be signed off by an optometrist.

I went back to Denise’s OP, and he said I needed cataract surgery, again. I told him my license had expired, and It was an emergency. He was very busy, and he was a little gruff with me. He did a laser burn to remove the cataract.

I went back to DMV, and had a problem seeing the chart, but I was able to pass. When I got home, the pain in my eye was unbearable, like the flash burns I got from welding without dark glasses.

All this time, nothing has been done to my right eye, and it has a mild cataract, which makes it seem like looking through a glass of weak tea. With the lens implant, I see a 50% magnification, which makes it bizarre trying to focus with both eyes. I close the left, and things are normal size with a brown tint. I close my right, and things are very bright, whites are very white, all magnified one and a half times, which is also very bizarre. Over the years I have coordinated both eyes, so that my vision is better with both eyes than either, by itself. Its like having bi-focals, again. I close my left, I see distance well, and I close my right, I see close up very well.

Once again, my vision improved so much, I hardly ever wear my glasses, and I enjoyed this up until the beginning of 2020, when I noticed I needed my specs more often.

Having this bizarre combination has been an experience I would never regret. We don’t appreciat our eyesight until its gone.

Take care of your balls! Eyes, that is.

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