Who knew that my protective eye gear following cataract surgery could double as a Halloween costume? It’s pretty spooky to think of someone poking around in your eyes when you’re wide awake, but also entirely miraculous. Although I have never taken psychedelics, I feel like I’m tripping on mushrooms (instead of tripping on unseen obstacles on the pavement): every faraway leaf and twig pops with clarity and color. I can read license plate numbers several cars away. (I’d still make a poor witness, however, since I can’t remember the number after the first two digits.) Night driving is possible again, especially since the new lens in one eye corrects my astigmatism.

Well, not everything. I’m now quite blind for all the close-up stuff (like my phone) I used to see with my naked eye, and my old glasses are useless. Luckily, a friend who had visited months before forgot her drugstore reading glasses, and said not to bother mailing them back–she was always losing them, so had several pairs. They were just the right power, so everything I read is crisp and clear. Or will be until I also start losing my cheaters, too.

I had been quite nervous about cataract surgery, especially after watching a surgeon stick a long needle into my unsedated husband’s eyeball to improve double vision years ago. Luckily, he is a complete stoic. I am not. The numbing drops and light straight-jacketing the pre-op nurses used on my arms and legs seemed insufficient to subdue the natural reflexes of anyone who wasn’t knocked out cold. But somehow they did the trick. I felt very little, but could observe what looked like dissolving aspirin tablets in pink mud on the insides of my eyelids. This turned out to be the lights of the magnifying lens used while they cut up and dissolve away the cloudy lens before replacing it. Very trippy and fascinating.

I’m glad I didn’t really know what was going on, though. Wanting to do a little research before writing this blog, I flinched in horror all the way through this video of actual cataract surgery, which wisely warns “Viewer discretion advised.”

That’s about all the horror I can take for Halloween. But my gratitude for this medical miracle and restored vision is undiminished.