It all started with my new eye. Okay, so it wasn’t an entire new eye. It just felt that way. You see, I had a cataract in my left eye that was so bad, I was functionally blind, and it had been that way for awhile. I had my right eye done in 2016 and it was a dreadful, factory operation that left me feeling taken advantage of and abused. This is by way of explaining why I waited so long for the next one. The corrective lens they put in was much weaker than I wished but the guy wasn’t interested in my opinion.

But this isn’t about my right eye, it’s about my left. And my experience couldn’t have been more different. The doc was very concerned with my satisfaction and he delivered! I was a little nervous going in but the team put me at ease. I think one of the big things that make people nervous is the retractor. You may have seen it if you ever watched a slasher film that features one. It hold the eyelids very open and exposes most of the eyeball. When they inserted it on me, I felt...nothing! He checked again to make sure that I was good and numb and then he began the procedure. He told me when he made the incision, if he hadn’t I wouldn’t have known. He did this every step of the way. He removed my old occluded lens and then he said,“Okay I’m going to insert the new lens. Here comes kaleidoscope lights!” And indeed, there were kaleidoscope lights and then I could see.

What I didn’t anticipate was what that was going to do to my brain! For 9 years, my right eye had been my dominant eye by default. Now, I had to teach my brain that the opposite eye was now dominant. In addition to that, my field of vision had just doubled. It was delightful, chaotic, and a little scary. I found all sorts of things from my past being dredged up. And disturbingly, I became prone to fits of tears. I say it was disturbing because I am not a crier. It’s not that I don’t have the emotions, I just don’t cry. I didn’t quite know what to do with myself when I did. So basically, my brain was on fire.

It was a life changing experience. And amazingly, after living most of my life with a bad tendency to be one sided, I can now see both sides of every argument!