Seeing Anyone New Lately?

One of the souvenirs I picked up on my journey through Cancerland (motto: “Maybe Not Quite the Happiest Place on Earth”) was a significant loss of vision. I visited several eye specialists, but none could tell me why my eyesight was so poor and why it seemed to be getting steadily worse. They could not prescribe glasses strong enough to help me see.

Finally, I was referred to an eye doctor who had more specialized equipment and knowledge about my type of vision loss. He took pictures of the inside of my eye and saw that my eye tissue was very swollen. This had apparently been caused by the whole-head radiation I had received three years earlier.

So I started getting monthly steroid shots to my eye,* and this reduced the swelling a little. But my vision was still bad – I couldn’t read normal-sized text, even with the strongest reading glasses I could buy at my reading-glasses-store-of-choice,** and I was unable to drive, which often made things complicated for my kids and put a lot of pressure on my husband.

It was time to consider cataract surgery. I was a little apprehensive about it at first. But I'd heard that the technology for cataract surgery had made amazing advances and that the procedure was safe, effective, and relatively painless. I knew I had an experienced and competent doctor. Also, by at this point, I was somewhat accustomed to having sharp objects skewering my eye.

So last month, I had cataract surgery on my left eye. It went well. I was in the hospital for only a few hours, and felt no real pain. The most inconvenient part of the procedure was the recovery at home. My left eye was bandaged, and my right eye is badly scarred, so I was essentially blind. The doctor told me that for 24 hours after the surgery, I would need a responsible adult with me all the time, which raised a problem because frankly, I don’t know any responsible adults (with the possible exception of my husband, and he had to go to work.)***

Because my right inner ear was severely damaged by surgery five years ago, my sense of balance is dependent on my eyesight. So my activity was very limited – I couldn’t walk, or read, or do crosswords, or watch TV, or use the computer. I was mostly stuck in bed, and although I was comfortable, I was extremely bored. I am a very easily bored person, and this type of imposed boredom is particularly excruciating for me. I had thought it was terrible to be confined to my sickbed during my chemotherapy treatments, but at least I had constant nausea and occasional vomiting to distract me from the tedium.

At last I was able to remove the bandage. Everything was blurry at first, which was normal, I learned, but my eyesight improved dramatically over the next week. The first two things I discovered
with my new vision were:

    - Whoa, I really look bad. I mean really bad. Much worse than I thought.

    - My house is very dirty. It wasn’t the clutter that surprised me – I could see well enough before the surgery to recognize a problem if there were, say, a basketball in the bathroom sink or a full-grown hedgehog on my kitchen counter. But the dust and the grime and the cobwebs had been invisible to me. If it's true that cleanliness is next to Godliness, we've been living in sin.

But then I started to notice other things I had forgotten: How beautiful my children are – what a startling shade of blue my husband’s eyes are – the beauty of the trees and the grass and the sky. And now I can read, an activity that I deeply missed.

Before the cataract surgery, and during the recovery, I often found myself wishing that someone would just spit in the dirt and put the mud on my eyes to cure my poor vision, the way Christ did for the man born blind, as told in the ninth chapter of the Gospel of John:


And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth. Jesus [said], I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.

When he had thus spoken, he spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay, and said unto him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam. He went his way therefore, and washed, and came seeing.

Then again called they [the Pharisees] the man that was blind, and said unto him, Give God the praise: we know that this man is a sinner. He answered and said, Whether he be a sinner or no, I know not: one thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see.

It seemed to me, at first glance, that this man received his vision the easy way – no looking for a spot in the hospital parking lot, no health questionnaires, no insurance co-pay. Why don’t things like that happen anymore?

But I’ve begun to realize now the immaturity of that way of thinking. What am I asking for, anyway, when I say I want a divine healing? Just because I didn't literally see God's hand in this doesn't mean it wasn't there. Looking back, I can clearly see that I did receive divine help – I was led to the right doctor, my surgery was successful, and I have had a smooth recovery.

On this day, when we gather to honor the life and marvel at the death and resurrection of Him who made lame men walk and blind men see, I add my testimony that He lives, that He loves us, that He heals our bodies, and our souls, still today. It is through His miraculous resurrection that my full vision will be restored to me someday, as will my lost hearing, teeth, hair, facial movement: indeed, a new body; a new life.

"I say unto thee, my son, that the plan of restoration is requisite with the justice of God; for it is requisite that all things should be restored to their proper order. Behold, it is requisite and just, according to the power and resurrection of Christ, that the soul of man should be restored to its body, and that every part of the body should be restored to itself." (Book of Mormon, Alma 41:2) 

Happy Easter.


*That’s right, actual shots to my actual eye. You can probably remember saying, when you were a child, “Cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle in my eye.” But you never thought anyone would ever really do it.  
**Dollar Tree
***We settled on my 18-year-old son, Danny, who had the day off from school, and he proved to be passably responsible.