Every year at Thanksgiving dinner, we would be asked at the table what we were thankful for that year. I could never think of much other than the usual trite responses — friends, family, food, etc. I never felt like I was being sincere.
This Thanksgiving, I genuinely have something to be thankful for. A lot, actually.
I’ve always had poor vision. I avoided wearing glasses as a kid, preferring to go around half-blind rather than being made fun of. I didn’t get used to wearing glasses and later contact lenses until I was 16.
Beginning about three or four years ago, I noticed that even with contact lenses, my eyesight was getting markedly worse. I started needing reading glasses pretty much all the time. I could no longer read my phone and was forced to use a laptop all the time instead.
Two years ago, I went to a Port Angeles football game in Kingston. I thought it was important because if they won, it would guarantee their first winning season in more than a decade. Port Angeles won the game quite easily, but I seriously regretted going to that game because it was an absolutely terrifying drive home. I simply could not see with headlights coming the other way. I had to drive all the way home with my left hand up blocking the oncoming headlights.
A little over a year ago, I got the diagnosis. It turns out two things were going wrong at the same time — glaucoma and cataracts.
I learned to live with it. I lived with the constant use of reading glasses and sticking my nose two inches away from my computer screen. I lived with not being able to drive after dark for more than two years. I graduated all the way up to +250 readers at the end.
Then suddenly this summer, my eyesight deteriorated even more. A lot. And in a frightening hurry. My left eye went almost totally blind. It was just a yellowish-white haze. My right eye, my so-called “good eye” that I was relying on to just function, had 20/200 vision. It turned out that eye was a lot more messed up than I realized at the time.
This summer, I got in a minor traffic accident driving in the Seattle area after dark. I hit a median in the middle of the road on a dark, unlit street, broke the wheel to my car and hurt my back. It cost me more than $400 in damage. I blamed the lousy street lighting at the time but I realize now my failing vision was probably a factor.
I covered a Sequim-Port Angeles girls soccer game this fall in which I absolutely could not read any of the uniform numbers and I kept having to ask people who just scored. The same at a couple of Port Angeles football games. Sometimes to read small print, I was forced to use contact lenses, reading glasses AND a magnifying glass AND cover my left eye. Contacts and reading glasses were no longer working.
They said I should get surgery as quickly as possible. I waited a few weeks and in that period, I swear my eyesight was getting worse by the week. My shoulders were both purple with bruises because I kept walking into doorframes that I couldn’t see.
I got the surgery on the near-totally blind eye in late October with an artificial lens and stents put in the eye to relieve pressure. They taped a plastic guard over the eye and after I got home, I napped because they gave me a lot of sedatives. When I woke up at about 5 p.m, my eye felt fine so I took off the guard, looking out my dining room window at the sunset.
I was utterly, completely blown away. I could actually see color. I could actually see purples and reds. Colors I had no idea were even there. In my right eye, everything was yellow. For the first time in perhaps years. I had no idea that I was looking at the world through a film of yellow cellophane over my eyes.
I got the second surgery on my “good” eye in early November. After a couple more weeks of healing, my vision is now 20/20 in both eyes with no side effects. They thought I would still need readers, but I really don’t at the moment. The doctors are amazed how much my eyesight has improved. I’m amazed. If I tell you that you look amazing today, it’s not a come on. I really mean it.
I thank my eye doctor Andrew Symonds and all the doctors at the Northwest Eye Surgeons in Sequim. I thank my coworkers for driving me to and from Sequim.
Having my dying eyesight restored. That’s something pretty big and tangible for me to be thankful for.
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Sports Editor Pierre LaBossiere can be contacted at plabossiere@peninsuladaily news.com.
