I used to be as blind as a bat. I could never see my toes in the shower. If I wanted to, I had to wear my glasses. That was how epilation and exfoliation were ever possible. The way I knew shampoo from shower foam was strictly by the colour of the bottles. I moved about in the house at night by the number of steps I had to take to get to the kitchen or the toilet, if I wanted to go there without my glasses. I could never wear cool Raybans. If I needed shade, I had to hold a brolly or wear a visor. Or use ugly clip-on sunglasses (there were no cool-looking Transition back then). I did start wearing contact lenses and tried them in all forms – hard, soft, monthlies, weeklies, dailies – but my eyes would get so tired from the wearing they would be puffed up and sore. And I could never put make-up on if I had to wear my glasses to work.

Over the twenty-one years of being a bat with optical defect, I’ve had 61 pairs of spectacles, and have spent much money on contact lenses, solutions and saline. They usually cost more than the average because the glasses had be high-indexed and the contacts had to be specially ordered. Although I have heard of the wonders of LASIK, I never really had the guts to try. I have a friend who went to get her myopia fixed and ended up with astigmatism instead (true story). No thanks, to that.

Until that fateful day when six-month old Ben grabbed my glasses and flung it to the floor. And the rest, they say, is history.

I never looked back ever since I got my severely blurred and distorted vision fixed. LASIK was the next best thing that ever happened to me, besides God and the husband. I’m telling you, it changed my life. For one, I could now see myself clearly in the shower.

“Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle.” – Walt Whitman