22 Feb Eye Opening Experience

Tomorrow afternoon I am having eye surgery.

For years and years I have endured rude questions, comments, and jokes because people think I am half Asian.

“Yes, my eyes are small, but no,” I say, “Both my parents are white and I am not adopted.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

My tiny eyesYes, both my parents are Canadian and Caucasian born, as are their parents. I know that am not adopted as I have pictures of my mother in the hospital holding me as a newborn. And as far as we know, in my huge family tree [which, I tracked for a grade 5 project] there are no Asians in my family.

Despite this, I still get asked if I know the best places to get Chinese food.

Tomorrow, this all comes to an end as I am having surgery to widen my tiny little eyes.

JOKES.

Ok ok… I am NOT having eye widening surgery to get rid of my tiny eyes, though I have been able to convince 4 different people that I am. Is that even a real thing?

Either way, tomorrow is the first of two eye surgeries that I am having  to get IMPLANTED CONTACTS dundundun.

Implantable contacts are pretty much just tiny hair-thin contact that are placed underneath the top layer of the eye.

Unfortunately, I have every problem known to man so my corneas are too thin to have regular laser eye surgery. I didn’t even know this type of surgery existed until I burst into tears in the eye consultant’s office when he broke the news and then comforted me saying there was another way. So here I am.

I’m not sure if anyone’s noticed, but my past few video blogs and the like have included me wearing glasses. I have actually been wearing glasses consistently since August because right after Ostomy camp my eyes decided it didn’t want to wear contacts anymore. Every time I put them in, my eyes would get all red and dry and… well it wasn’t pretty.

Since I literally cannot see a foot in front of me without any eye enhancing technology, I was stuck with glasses.

I used to wear contacts all day every day, so having to wear glasses again was not only a hassle, but a challenge. As I have learned over the past couple of months- glasses suck:

1. They get in the way when you’re trying to do your makeup
2. They collect rain drops when it’s raining outside so it still looks like it’s raining even when you’re inside.
3. They consistently fall off when you’re doing the downward dog or other upside down poses during yoga
4. They fog up when you get on a really warm bus from being outside in the extreme winter cold
5. They get in the way when your face is trying to touch someone else’s face… if you know what I mean…

Pretty much, they became a huge nuisance in my life and I needed to do anything to get rid of them.

That is why, tomorrow, I am getting contacts implanted underneath my eye. Sounds great, right?

That isn’t even the best part: because, for some reason, they have to do each eye a week apart, they are taking ONE lens out of my glasses. They usually just suggest people wear a contact in the other eye, but, HELLO, that is why I’m doing this surgery. Therefore, I am going to be missing one piece of glass out of my glasses and I will look like this:

Lensless glasses 

With one lens missing from my glasses I am not only going to look like a special person whose broken her glasses, but my mobility will probably become that of a drunk person from my lack of depth perception. My brother thinks it’ll be funny to keep giving me high fives. I told him it won’t be so funny when I smack him in the face when I miss.

I fully acknowledge now that this surgery is elective and I, as well as many people reading this blog, have been through much worse. We’ve tackled medications with crazy side effects, horrible tests through parts of the body that should not be tested, and surgeries that have flipped a coin on whether we lived or died. We’ve been through much worse than a simple surgery like this.

I cannot, however, shake this feeling of fear and nausea at the thought of someone slicing my eye open.

Wish me luck?

[PS: any friends in the Toronto area are welcome to visit and laugh at me in this state while I hibernate for the week 🙂 ]

[PPS: As you can see, I’m trying out illustrations. Yes/No?]