My vision’s better because my eyes are worse!

Yes, that’s what he said! Go figure…

But he explained. The cataracts that have clobbered me at relatively early age, they’re what poses my main seeing problem right now.  And those cataracts have grown bigger, smack mid-eye, each eye, right where I look out. So they’ve changed my eyes’ shape, making me more far-sighted, able to see better, if less crystal clear—in the distance.

“Second sight,” some people call it, he tells me, when this far vision improvement startles them.

So that explains it.

Or does it?

.

It explains the better far vision. What about my better near vision? That’s what first surprised me so that night…

In these past few months, I’ve done so much up-close seeing I couldn’t do a year or two ago:

threading my sewing machine needle, seeing clearly both needle eye and thread traveling through.

working jigsaw puzzles again, discerning subtle color nuances that had frustrated me so much before, I’d just walked away, let someone else assemble jigsaws.

reading the fine print: on pill bottles, DVD cases, and in books I’d packed to give away, but now have put back on the shelf…

working fine embroidery I thought I’d given up on for good…

If my eye’s just morphed more toward distance, why can I see those things better?

Maybe I should call and ask…

Maybe not.

 

The trouble? Decision-making.  The kind I hate:

Cataract surgery is fast, simple, highly successful, and the eye guy doing them around here has Super Surgeon reputation, for precision and dearth of ill effects.

Easy answer—except for the dystrophy.

For many folks with Fuchs’, cataract surgery apparently causes no worsening of their dystrophy. For some, it does. So you gamble.

I’d know right away, the doctor said. No slow and uncertain worsening. Any bad effect would rear up, immediate and noticeable. Wonderful.

So there it lurks, always: that possibility of lens replacement worsening my vision, lots.

So what do I do?

It’s a choice one must make for herself.

Also a choice that can be made at any time.

That last statement is the “out” I grabbed.

I left his office in peace unexplained.

Well, maybe not entirely unexplained.

Fact is, I’m am delighted, and so grateful, over how well I can see, right now. In some ways my vision’s better than Husband’s, though his eyes are healthy, never have been as poor-sighted as mine, and the eye doc doesn’t even mention cataracts to this man older than myself… Also, when I first learned of my cataracts, and the “something else” that might defeat their surgery, I imagined fast-approaching blindness! That over-drama hardly happened! Yet, anyhow.

Next year’s eye exam is all set up. I can always choose surgery then.

Meanwhile, did God do something miraculous with my near vision anyhow? I don’t know. I can see inexplicably better to do close things, that’s all I know.

He could keep me seeing fairly well the rest of my life. He could even give me better clarity than ever…

Or He could let me go completely blind.

Yes.

God heals in varied ways. Through doctors, surgery, nutritional improvements, medicines… and sometimes by means no one can explain.

But not always.

Jesus healed. Miraculously. Crowds of people. But not everyone (as after His resurrection, God continued healing miraculously, but not everyone. For instance, Paul—2 Cor 12:7-9). Physical healing was not Christ’s main earthly mission. He came to enable us to see His Kingdom (John 3:3). That’s the vision I treasure most. May everyone who reads here have it!

 

*****