I’m one of those who used to wear thick ice-cube glasses due to my very bad eyesight (high degree of astigmatism as well). Doing sports was difficult and painful for the ears and nose, with the weight of my glasses pulling down on them.
All these changed when I switched to contact lenses after finishing college. Getting rid of all that weight was a liberating experience. But my eyes did not take well to contacts, always turning red and dry. Things got a little better when my optician recommended hard lenses, which he claimed were better for people with a high degree of astigmatism.
But contact lenses are troublesome to use – what with the cleaning, disinfecting and all. I wanted total freedom from all these foreign objects in my body. When Lasik came to our shores, I was super excited. But the cost was less than affordable, until recently, that is.
I took the Lasik plunge in January 2005 and have not looked back since. I was initially afraid that my eyesight was too bad to be corrected. However, after some checks at the Singapore National Eye Centre, the doctor said that I was suitable, but had to undergo a special procedure. I was ecstatic! At last, a real liberation. I went for the procedure without any fear – at worse, I would still end up wearing glasses; but how thick and heavy can these glasses be? Definitely better than my ice-cube ones right?
The procedure went without any hitch and I was then able to wake up in the middle of the night, read the time on my bedside clock, look out of the window and see EVERYTHING clearly without having to fumble for my glasses! The feeling was that of total liberation!
I wasn’t the only one in my family who was liberated. My brother, his wife, my sister and her daughter and just recently my brother-in-law too, all went for Lasik and are happier for it.
I was more than glad to bring my old glasses back to the Eye Centre to drop them into the donation boxes there. The thump! of the glasses hitting the bottom of the box sort of took away the weight of the bad eyesight that I’ve been carrying with me since I was in primary school.
But alas! Age is catching up – recently, reading small prints, particularly those on the labels of products at the supermarket, has become difficult.
I suppose I’ll need reading glasses soon. There’s just no escaping them glasses, is there?
Thank goodness this applies to everyone when they get to a certain age! So don’t go ha!ha! at me just yet!
