New Eyes!

I got glasses around age 8 because I was near-sighted (i.e., I could see things near me, but things far away were blurry), and then got hard, gas-permeable contact lenses around age 11. In early 2016, after 26 years of doing fine, my eyes started getting watery, goopy and irritated while my contacts were in; I had developed Giant Papillary Conjuctivitis (GPC). It's a condition that people with allergies and hay fever are more prone to (me!!), and can also happen when a person doesn't clean her contacts as she should or over-wears them (sometimes me). Long story short, I ended up wearing glasses for 2 years because my eyes continued to freak out after prescription drops and periods of not wearing contacts were tried.

While they helped hide the middle-aged eye wrinkles I'm getting as well as occasional blemishes, I didn't like wearing glasses. I couldn't wear sunglasses (UGH!), couldn't see to shave my legs in the shower, couldn't see to blow dry my hair, and my husband wasn't a huge fan of my new heavy black frames.

At least the new black frames...

With my sister and comedian David Huntsberger in June 2017

were better than these:

With a prescription around -8, I wasn't a candidate for Lasik vision-correcting surgery, but I did learn that implantable contact/collamer lenses (ICLs) were an option. These function like regular contacts except they sit between your iris and natural lens inside your eyes. I talked to a couple of different doctors and decided to get the procedure done at Kaiser in Santa Clara.

Surgery on March 2 went well. They numbed and dilated my eyes with tons of drops beforehand and gave me a sedative through an IV. There were no tense needle-coming-at-my-eye scenarios, just a really bright light, and at times 4 puffy donuts with a single fat grain of rice in the middles came into my vision (?). The lenses are inserted via a small incision then opened further inside. But I saw no hint of where the incision was, and there was virtually no pain or irritation. The worst part was waiting 3-4 days for the dilation to wear off, but that was just annoying. I could see better right away, and after waiting a month for my eyes to settle in and be done with the post-op drops, I got my eyes tested and learned I am no longer near-sighted! However, I do have astigmatism left--I knew I would as that has to do with the shape of the eye--so I need glasses to see properly in dim-light situations like driving at night. Overall, I am very happy with my new eyes.