I looked out the window as the airplane descended Tuesday afternoon and as the cloud cover gave way to the streets, houses and parking lots of greater Chicagoland, I saw something amazing: everything. Back in September I had PRK laser corrective surgery on both of my eyes and spent the first few weeks wondering if perhaps I'd made a huge mistake.
The first couple of days I slept a lot and wandered around in a drug-induced stupor. The first week I couldn't use a computer screen--even reading emails on my Blackberry was a challenge. The first month I went through bottle after bottle of moisturizing eye drops and struggled with my distance vision. I couldn't recognize faces from more than 10 or 15 feet away, so I felt awkward wondering if I should be smiling and waving to people down my block (or even across the street).
More recently I'd noticed I could recognize friends at a distance and read street signs before they were directly over my head.
But looking out that tiny window above O'Hare I could see everything and every detail was crystal clear. I finally felt like I would be happy if my vision settled at this level of accuracy. But from everything I've heard, it is more likely that it will continue to improve over then next few months. And that's fine by me too.
Why was I on a plane on Tuesday, you ask? I went to NYC for a brainstorm on Monday. Productive work + delicious food + late night saki bar + Uniqlo (yes, again) + amazing hotel = good trip.
