Hi. My name is Janelle. I'm 44 years old. And I have cataracts. What??!!
4 doctors checked my eyes to see for themselves. I asked the first one, "Excuse me, but did you just say cataracts? As in, what old people get?" I found out there are common cataracts that grow slowly and happen in older people. And then there are rarer ones that grow fast and happen in younger people (me).
One doctor dilated my eyes, then took a video and showed me what my cataracts look like. Dan was super interested in watching that part, reminding me of the time I had a c-section and he leaned over the curtain to watch the whole thing, saying to me, "This is so cool! You should see this!"
I get the double whammy of having cataracts in the middle of each eye, with one eye worse than the other, plus cataracts growing around the edges of each eye too. I also have astigmatism, with one eye worse than the other. My ophthalmologist dad told me he's "genuinely shocked" and wasn't expecting cataracts at all in me. But here I am, sitting in my stretchy dress and compression socks and orthotic shoes, with gray hair coming in faster these days, adding cataracts to my list of aging issues. Lovely.
My anesthesiologist brother was in town this week too. He said in his many years of assisting with cataract surgeries, there’s only been one person in their forties.
I haven’t had my eyes checked since 2016, and I had 20/15 vision my whole life until recent years. They’ve been getting bad...blur, halos, blinding glare from light, a little bit of double vision, etc. I keep upping the strength of my reader glasses but still being frustrated, and now farther things are getting blurry too. Sometimes I have a dull pain behind one eye, different than my regular migraine pain. And for a while my night vision has been terrible when I drive, … especially when it's dark and raining. I recently noticed when I drive at night, my body is tense, I lean forward, I clutch the steering wheel tightly, and I avoid looking at headlights or streetlights. I thought I just needed an eye checkup and the right prescription. But the unexplained pain worried me, so I asked the doctor to check on my floaters and for anything that might be causing pain like, oh, a tumor behind my eye. I was not expecting cataracts. I'm told the dull pain I feel is because my eyes are straining to see better through cataracts, and one eye is trying to compensate for the other eye that has a worse cataract.
I’m fascinated by this literature I brought home from the office, because I find myself saying, “Yes!” as I read descriptions cataracts. It just wasn’t even on my radar. I didn’t know cataracts could get me at this age. I asked the doctors, “So how long do I have before I need surgery? 5 years? 10 years?” They replied, “Um, no, it’s more like within one year you need surgery, if you can even make it that long.”
So I have answers, and I like solid answers. I’m not just imagining things like not being able to see well at night when I drive, or worsening eyesight. It’s legitimate and there’s a cause. And now I have to wrap my head around this and think it through and plan surgeries which have to be done on different days, ideally 2 weeks apart. And we live far away. Maybe during spring break? Maybe next summer? Maybe sooner if the cataracts grow too fast? Maybe later if they don't grow as fast as expected? In the meantime I’ll be trying to avoid scary night driving, shopping for new progressive prescription glasses the doctors said will buy me time, and wearing sunglasses consistently, trying to protect what I have left (I’m not a sunglass person but will learn to be).
