The coda to this story is the second operation a week later.
Now I knew what to expect I was really looking forward to it. Everything went smoothly as before until I got back to Hannah's house in the early evening. While the dressing was on I had no trouble seeing everything with my one treated eye which had now settled down and felt completely normal.
Then at 7 I had to take the dressing off to do the first lot of drops. It was a nasty shock. I was seeing double and the left eye was clouded.
It was Megan, my grand-daughter's fifteenth birthday and Hannah had planned a meal out in Pieminister - a down-to-earth restaurant in Stokes Croft specialising in pies. It was a difficult evening in a noisy environment feeling quite anxious about the operation. Still, the food was good and I managed to talk to Danny, Megan's dad.
When we got back I took the dressing off again and POW - there was the world in high definition 3D as clear as a bell. We had a follow up appointment at Optical Express at 8.30 next morning. We had to wait a few minutes for Guy the optometrist who lives in Cardiff and had got delayed in traffic held up by the dreadful weather. He did the standard eye tests and announced that I had 20/15 vision in both eyes - one better than the benchmark 20/20 vision.
Ever since then I've eagerly drinking in all the detail in my surroundings - even in near constant rain, everything looked great, and when some patches of sunlight lit up parts of the Usk valley on the way home I was enraptured.
How beautiful the world is. Why do we have to mess it up so much?
