This is a topic where I truly don’t know where to begin…so I’ll just start with the part where I needed glasses…it was something that I long knew, but refused to face, simply people of the stereotype associated with glasses. I didn’t want to be called ‘four eyes’ through school…yeah I was one of those kids…looking back on it, it sounds quite stupid. Getting to the point, in college the fact that I needed glasses was obvious when I would anchor the news on the college’s radio station; large words, all in caps, screen as bright as it could go. Yup red flags there.
In June 2014, right after first year of journalism school, I got my eyes tested and sure enough, I needed glasses. I know, shocker.
I wound up selecting a pair of glasses and after a couple of days they were ready. I head to my summer job, the one I’ve had for several years, working at a grocery store, with my new pair of glasses. Over the course of that summer I began to realize the annoyance of glasses, the constant fogging up and smudges. It took a little while to get used to.
Then the thought of hey, I should get contact lenses, that would fix that problem – here comes the eye phobia part. In order to insert contact lenses, one just insert it onto the eyeball…couldn’t do it, just not going to happen. With that idea out the window, I start researching laser eye surgery, but with the price tag associated with it and going to college and working at a grocery store, it wasn’t a viable option.
After graduating college, I wound up getting another job with good benefits and after a year and a half later, those benefits kicked in and sure enough laser eye surgery once again became an option.
This past January I got tested to see if my eyes were a candidate for laser eye surgery. Thankfully I was – after numerous machines with bright lights made the few minutes feel like hours. Then in March, it was the big day. Surgery day. Driving to Scarborough, Ont., which is near Toronto, I wasn’t nervous at all, mainly just looking forward to being able to see normally again. Fast forwarding to a couple of hours later, I’m in the waiting room, the line of people in front of me is getting shorter and shorter, there’s a few people who are anxious and have to take sedation meds to calm them down, I’m still not fazed. No need to have those calming medication.
My name is called to head into operation room one, it’s show time. Alrighty then, I thought. Walking into the OR room, nothing out of the ordinary, just a typical surgical room. I lay on the cushiony table and the doctor begins. He starts with my right eye. Taping my eye lids open, numbing drops come next, then the scalpel. He cuts a layer of my eye ball off, I can see it all happen, but can’t feel a single thing. My heart rate and breathing increases slightly, it’s the eye phobia thing that I mentioned earlier. Then comes total darkness, I felt as if a suction cuff was placed on my eye, then the laser did its magic. My sight begins to come back, I see the doctor putting the layer of eye ball he had removed literally three minutes earlier, yep, it lasted only mere minutes. Then he moved on to the left eye and did the exact same thing.
If you think that was the defining moment I overcame my eye phobia, guess again. That was phase one of two. For the next couple of weeks or so you have to put three separate types of eye drops in several times a day, especially for the first week – that helps the eyes heal and keeps them moist. I literally couldn’t put the drops in, having the little bottle of liquid hovering above and watching droplets fall into your eyes just didn’t work for me. I ended up getting other people to help me and do it for me. I eventually became accustomed to the drops and eventually my phobia disappeared. After many years and struggles of things only people who wear glasses could understand, I finally could see again and no longer have an eye phobia.
The reason why I’m sharing my story is two-fold, one to say who cares what other people think of you, let them judge. It really doesn’t matter, there are more important things in life. Secondly, sometimes the best way to conquer a phobia is to hit it head on.
Josh Casey can be reached at josh.casey@interior-news.com