Previous and recent eye surgeries have shown me something that should have been intuitively obvious but wasn’t.

One of my first t1d complications happened abnormally quickly. I developed an involved case of diabetic retinopathy 7-8 years (I think) after being diagnosed. I’m grateful that I lucked into seeing Dr. Boyer via a Cedars Sinai referral, and he immediately performed laser eye treatments on both eyes to treat the retinopathy and prevent blindness. I am still grateful.

The laser treatments were not without side effects. They reduced the contrast in my eyes which is noticeable at night, and have in effect reduced the dynamic range of my vision causing partial red/orange and green/blue color-blindness. But the sharpness of my vision was maintained, and both retinas were now more resistant to future retinopathy incursions.

More recently, my eye doctors have been tracking the growth of cataracts in both eyes. With the hell that has been 2026 (maybe more on that later), I am just now getting around to having cataract removal surgeries done on both eyes. The left eye (done first) has no cloudiness, but is bluer in tint. The right eye with the natural lens (at least until tomorrow) has a warmer tint and is cloudy. The A/B on looking at things one eye at a time Is telling, and I feel like the new eye lens feels like I am seeing everything bathed In LED light while my natural lens is more like an incandescent.

Both the laser treatments and cataract-removal have affected how I perceive the world through sight. And as a hobby photographer, I am both fascinated and partially concerned at how I will view images that I have run through post-processing.

Perception is indeed fluid.