Sight is what you see with your eyes,

vision is what you see with your mind.

--Robert Kiyosaki.

Just to be clear, watching television has become watching sports for me. I rarely, if ever, tune to much more than games these days. May is the best month of the year for that habit. The Red Sox are in full swing, and most years the Bruins and Celtics are in the playoffs. This year we are hoping that our long drought of Championship Parades, 5 years, will be over.

And yes, we recently hooked up two televisions when the playoff games were on at the same time. Two clickers, alternating mute buttons based on commercials and game action. Here's hoping that June is an even better month because it will mean both winter teams are in the Finals for their respective sports.

I don't take this for granted, having endured decades of poor Red Sox and Patriots teams, and limited spurts of greatness from the Bruins and Celtics this century.

I also don't take my sight for granted, as this story will reveal.

As I was laying on my back, hooked up to an IV, with a blood pressure cuff and that thing on your finger that measures your oxygen levels, plus a covid mask, a hairnet, and drugged up, I was nervous. 

Many/most readers have probably had some type of surgery, but not me. I managed to make it seven decades without being in an operating room, but that was all about to end.

Yes, I still have my appendix, and tonsils. All original equipment is, or was intact, and I’ve never had a kidney stone, or a serious injury that required surgery, although surgery and my family are not strangers. But this was the first time during a surgery that I was in pre-op instead of the waiting room.

The occasion? Eye surgery. Two very scary words. Even scarier for me than most, and I'll explain why in this story.

It had been determined by the medical community that the cataracts in both my eyes had reached a point where removal and replacement with a little itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny bit of plastic would improve my quality of life.

I agreed. Driving at night, seeing double sometimes, and feeling like I was looking through a plastic bag helped me agree with the eye care professionals. In fact, I had sought out some help because I noticed a deterioration in my vision.

But before this story moves forward, it should move back to the start.

I was born with something called Fuchs Corneal Dystrophy in my right eye, so I’ve never been truly able to see very well. I’ve operated my whole life with more or less one eye. 

Oh, things are ‘clear’ in my right eye but there is apparently a split in the cornea and my eye takes in two images: the normal one that you see, and…my nose. These two images offset each other, and so I can see light, and my peripheral vision is solid, but. 

In fact, that might be the best way to describe the vision in my right eye: my straight ahead vision is like your peripheral vision. You can’t read with peripheral vision and you can’t drive, and I can’t either.

This particular defect has been hard to explain and has baffled many over the years.

• When taking the athletic physical at the University of Massachusetts, the physician indicated that I was only cleared for soccer, and that I could not be approved for ice hockey. When I protested that I wouldn’t hurt myself, he told me he was concerned I would hurt others. The hockey athletic chapter of my life closed on that September morning, but every year after that, the other soccer players would try to get behind me in the physical line to see the doctor's reaction when I said: 'what chart?' during the eye test for my right eye.

• When I moved to California, after having a perfect driving record in Massachusetts for close to 20 years, the Division of Motor Vehicles thought it would be a good idea to have me take a road test, just to be sure. I passed, although I was pissed.

• When I moved to Memphis and checked the criteria for a license in Tennessee, I realized I didn’t qualify with my vision, so I waited until the day my California license expired before going to that DMV and I was a nervous wreck. I passed with the strict criteria that I could only drive a vehicle that had two outside rear-view mirrors. True story. I quickly agreed.

To make things more interesting, my left eye, my 'good eye' has always been spectacularly nearsighted, and I’ve worn glasses since I was 8 years old.

And, just for fun, I am colorblind in many ways, so I do not buy clothes alone. I need my wife or son to tell me the colors. I know most of the crayons in the crayon box, but blue and purple confuse me, brown and gray can wreak havoc with my fashion sense, and don't even mention pastels to me.

For years I wore a tan shirt that I found out was actually pink. Just this week, my wife told me that the plaid shirt I was wearing had three shades of green, but one of them I could swear was blue, or even purple.

So, as you can see, me and my eyes have had an interesting relationship to say the least.

Thus, my thoughts were racing wildly around the room, as I was laying down, all wired up, drugged up and IV-ed up, before going to have surgery on my right eye, with my good left eye scheduled in a week.

Like everyone else who has ever laid on that gurney, waiting for the big event, I dwelled on the fact that, like any surgery, something could go wrong, I had to make peace with…the rest of my life.

That old cliché ‘today is the first day of the rest of your life’ was staring me in the face. It really was. I was thinking that at the end of the day, or the end of the week, after both eyes had been split open, I was going to be someone different, yet the same.

My world would be different, hopefully better. Isn't that what we all think when making a big decision? Different, hopefully better.

I was going to be different because there would no longer be glasses between my big brown eyes and the rest of the world. (Oh, they told me I might need reading glasses, but that is a whole different world than depending on glasses to get through life.)

I was going to be the same because the surgery wouldn’t change who I was, what I thought, or how I acted. Much.

I was whisked away, awake through the whole thing, but sedated enough to keep my comments to myself, for the right eye surgery, which went well, according to the doctor. Shockingly, I had no post-operative pain. I was relieved and could definitely see better without the cloudy cataract that was like looking through a plastic bag over my eye.

Now I had to mentally prepare for the other eye. The left eye surgery was a bigger deal, because even though I was very nearsighted and color blind, it was, after all my ‘good eye.’ 

I was a little less nervous and a little more nervous at the same time. Weird, I know. 

• I was less nervous because I’d been there and done that and the mystery of surgery was long gone.
• But more nervous because it was my only usable eye and if something went wrong...

It went well. About the same. Post surgery, when I realized that it was successful, again with no pain, I wasn’t exactly born again, but I was introduced to a whole new world. 

I keep reaching for eyeglasses that aren't there and I don't need.

I wake up looking for them, and then realize, I don't wear them anymore.

I am a little more amazed at the beauty in the world, including in my own home.

I was also recently at the doctor's office for an x-ray, had to wait about an hour, and was continually amazed that my glasses didn't fog up while wearing the mask, and then remembered that I wasn't wearing glasses.

Since those surgeries I’ve told people life is like walking around with a giant HDTV screen in front of me. I am seeing details, both inside and in nature, that were previously denied to me. I am still color-blind, so shopping alone is still out.

But my eye can see clearly now.

Including the bags that are under my eyes, that I never knew were there.

Be careful what you wish for.