In early January, I had eye surgery to free myself from glasses and contact lenses. The procedure was called refractive lens exchange, or custom lens replacement (CLR, pronounced like the word “clear”). During CLR, an ophthalmologist removes the natural lens from behind each eye and replaces them with synthetic interocular lenses (IOLs). In my case, like cataract surgery without the cataracts.
IOLs can never develop cataracts and are free of the age-related hardening and clouding that begins in your 40s. This lens hardening causes presbyopia, which means you may need reading glasses, even if you’ve had LASIK in the past to correct astigmatism. CLR restores the eye’s original refractive ability by dealing with all of your vision problems on the back end. Usually, CLR patients no longer need any vision correction.
Although my first CLR corrected most of my astigmatism, it took three further surgeries to bring my vision up to its present point: clear at all distances. I would have been dumbfounded to know back at the beginning that it would ultimately take four procedures to permanently correct my vision. But fortunately it was all covered by the initial price I’d paid and today I have no regrets.
Collecting Postcards 