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Yesterday when I walked through the garden sector of Lowe's, the colors of the flowers on sale there, were one color when I shut my right eye, and another color entirely when I shut my left eye. I don't have a clue how long I've been seeing the false colors with my left eye, but however long that's been, I've been seeing the false colors with my right eye too.
That is, until high noon last Tuesday, when the cataract in my right eye was replaced with a clear plastic lens designed to remove the UV rays from entering my eyeball. The removal of the UV rays from the light that enters my eyeball means that I still don't see the natural colors of flowers at Lowe's or even in my own yard. I never will again.
In a couple of months when the left eye cataract is replaced with a similar UV lens, I'll ONLY see an artificial, ultra-violet-less world that was not the intention of God. Contrarily, I may actually see God with my new plastic UV-protected lens. Who knows? Amazing grace... eh?
Along with the little black naugahyde bag the surgeon gave me to take home with all the eye drops and dark sunglasses and the plastic shield I have to tape over my eye for sleeping, he was careful to point out the business card of the company that made the lens. The business card fit perfectly behind the clear plastic window on the naugahyde bag. I guess the bag and the eye drops were provided along with the lens in some sort of package deal.
I used the information on the card to look it up on the internet, and the technical data (that I didn't understand) was all there to peruse. I did understand the symbol UV because I'd read about it while researching what was gonna happen. The surgeon didn't manufacture the lens, why would he care if I were informed they were UV lens, and why would he think I have a need-to-know?
Filtering the UV rays from the light that enters my eyeball is probably a good thing. It means that I'll never have to pay extra for that feature in any eyeglasses I might purchase in the future, but it ain't natural. Replacing my old worn-out cataracts with clear lens ain't exactly natural either, but it's half-way done.
I can't see the world the way I did as a newborn ever again. Newborns see the effect of UV spectrum rays on the objects of the world. My worn-out cataracts prevented me from seeing the world as a newborn, and that's the way I still see the objects of the world through my left eye currently. My right eye can't see the effect of the UV spectrum on the objects of the world, and never will again. Soon, my left eye will join it.
When I was walking up and down the aisle in the Lowe's home and garden center I could read the signs on the wall all the way to the back of the store from the front of the store with my left eye closed. It's not just colors that have changed, but shapes appear that have distinct edges and lines. I only have to close one eye and open the other to see the difference. I was blind, and now I half-way "see".
The way I remember the world is half-gone now. It's not reliably half-assed true to what I remember from before I got reading glasses. So, maybe the new lens is "better" in a lotta ways, but it's not the way I remember the visual world. This unfamiliarity is bugging me now, much less what it might be like when the left eye procedure is performed.
The possibility exists that when both cataracts are replaced with UV lens, the world I "see" will be as scary as hell. Not because it's any more dangerous or safer, but because it's not the world I thought was there. I'll be even more like "a stranger in a strange land" than ever. People may look so different than what I remember them as looking like I might not know them. Not that I ever have, of course.
How awkward and cumbersome will it be if I actually see more of them than has ever been available to me? I got to know everybody I do, back when I was blinded by compromised cataracts. What if the new person I see in the old person I thought I knew as a friend or enemy, provides me with such a deeper insight, that when I treat them as what I realize they can be in the future, that they shun me for knowing more than they need to know about themselves, and hate me for it.
My youngest brother, who drove me over to the hospital and back to get the procedure done already hates me a little bit. He thinks I am is an ungrateful wretch for not appreciating what the doctors have done for me. He doesn't wanna hear my concerns about how the UV being filtered out of my potential vision might affect me and make me appear more senile than I am already. The doctors know best. What kind of fool does he have for a brother? I truly hate being an embarrassment to him, but I'm stuck being me. I am may not be what embarrasses him.
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