about the cataracts

So last week, J.Lo found out he has cataracts. Frankly, I thought he was joking when he told me, because although he IS ancient, 36 years years of age and cataracts seems unheard of, right? I've looked into it just to make sure, and it kind of is.

While I am virtually blind without my contact lenses, J.Lo has had no eye problems his whole life, has never had to wear glasses or have regular eye exams. The children should hope that they get his genes for eyesight, except not really, because now he has cataracts. Recently, he has had a lot of headaches over his left eye, which we simply chalked up as The Tumor, and/or K.Lo's tendency toward high-pitched, incessant repitition. But then it started to make sense that someone who looks at a computer all day and reads a lot and has gone over 30 years without glasses might need to make an eye appointment. So he did, and he does need glasses, but he also has, freakishly, cataracts in his right eye. Or is it "cataract," if we're talking about just one eye.

Cataracts progress quickly, and once they occur in one eye, the other usually is soon to follow. So eventually, he will need surgery for both eyes, have both lenses replaced. The surgery sounds scary and grotesque and, to a person such as myself who is completely sensitive about eye issues and formerly traumatized from having to play Bombardment in gym class without glasses, like a true nightmare. J.Lo is generally unphased, to which I say, Better him than me. They'd have to knock me with a baseball bat out if they wanted to stick a needle in my eye and shatter my lens with ultrasonic waves. Or whatever it is they do. It's something like that. The very thought of it makes me hyperventilate a little.

This surgery is pretty common at this point, and I'm not too worried about the results, other than that my father had a similar surgery once to replace his eye lens, and they messed it up, and now he has permanent glaucoma. I can't really worry too much about that, I just have to hope to hell they know what they are doing and they do it right. What bothers me more is that the surgery is commonplace, yes, but it's commonplace for OLD PEOPLE. And J.Lo is not old. So this leads me to the real issue, the question of why. Why does he have cataracts now, at this age. It could be in his family history, some long-lost relative with thirtysomething cataracts. It wasn't an eye injury, it wasn't all those steroids he took back in the 90s. Sometimes things just happen, but with something so odd, I can't help but think about it and obsessively research it until I settle on an answer. Probably I won't get one.

The other thing that bothers me is that yes, there is a relatively simple solution to this problem, one that will be obtained once the problem gets bad enough for insurance to cover. (A note to Swing State: Which candidate is going to come up with a health care plan that doesn't require people to wait until they are half blind before getting surgery? Please advise.) But I get all panicky considering that if we didn't happen to be living in this day and age and time and place, there wouldn't be a solution, and then J.Lo would go quickly blind, and wouldn't be able to drive, work, or just plain SEE. See me, our kids, our dogs, nature, TV, EVERYTHING. Mendacious has pointed out that I shouldn't be so fatalistic, that obviously blindness is commonplace enough and I should know his and our lives would not be over. But still. It makes me tear up just a little. Then again, if we weren't living in this time and place and day and age, I too would be walking around blind, or even just having to wear the most hideous glasses on the planet, instead of contact lenses, which for some of us can be emotionally traumatizing.

Clearly, I just need to accept the circumstances as they are in front of us: it is what it is, and there is a solution. And I should be--I am--grateful for that. But still. CATARACTS.