August 20, 2011

• The emotional aspects. . . . .

  Boy, talk aboiut unintended consequences.  I sorata expected the surgery to improve my vusion–never dreamed it would literally cure my near-sightedness, but it did.  A life-long eyeglass addict, I am typing this wearing 1.5 diopter reading glasses–I use 2.5s to read, and can  drive and watch TV with no glasses at all.  This is an amazingly big deal, considering that all my life, I was fearful of losing my glasses.  But still another and greater unintended improvement has come up.

  It seems that as the catarat had been growing, and my sight waning, I was becomng more and more emotionally withdrawn.  And considering that I was “the most macho” man that Kanthy had ever met, she told me early on, I was pretty closed-down to start with.  Anyway, now I relallize that over the years, as I lost vision, I became more defensive, embattled, was under constant tension that I was not even aware of.

  Talking to Kathy about this right after the surgery, she told me that she used to wonder why I would get upset over small things.  And I did–my gosh, I am ashamed to think of how I snapped out at  everyone  from Kathy to business associates , for very little reason.  Now that the cataract is gone (actually, there were two, but the left eye was a stage one, which just knocked my corrected vision down to 20/30 from 20/20), I am more tolerant, easy-going, compassionate, at ease with the world, and confident.

  One of my customers who works at the local laundromat said she hardly recognized me, mainly because the tension was gone from my face.  She added that I now look ten to twenty years younger, which gratifies my ego immensely.  I know, I’m pathetic.

  I am also happy.  So happy.  I just look at things–anything–and smile and laugh.  Yesterday, I caught myself  literally cackling–just for the fun of it.  And I am still getting used to this–every now and then, I get this odd fleeting sensation of “wrongness”–that is–”I can see and I’m not wearing glasses–what’s going on?”

   If I stay in this exalted mood, I may even forgive the manager of the Hampton Inn, the hotel from Heck, who grossly mistreated my wife and myself when we were easy targets–I was weakened from surgery, Kathy from the drive and her many chronic ailments.

  On second thought, I will forgive her when the hotel lives up to its promise (“We want you to be satisfied, or we don’t want you to pay”)–and that will never happen.

  • 6:20 pm
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