This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

When I was a cop, I got punched in the eye one night while wearing hard contact lenses. My eyeball suffered a slight cut that turned it the color of a maraschino cherry.

The injury, while painful, actually worked to my advantage. After the cut healed, my eye remained blood red for a couple of weeks. I put it to good use.

Glaring at suspects through a satanic-looking orb made them visibly uneasy. I was either a werewolf in mid-transition or a cop teetering on the edge of insanity. Cooperation seemed the best course of action.

I'd love to say that it was the last time I had a serious problem with my vision. I can't. My eyes have since become the twin barometers of advancing age.

Getting old is tough on joints, spines, hips, bladders, hearing and other parts. But it's the eyes I notice most, probably because I have to look through them in order to find the medications for some of that other stuff.

I had Lasik surgery over 10 years ago. Monovision to be exact. One eye is corrected for distance, the other for close up. Sounds annoying, but it actually worked. They tried it out on me with contacts first, to see if my brain could handle the difference.

According to medical rumor, the more rudimentary a brain is, the easier it will accommodate monovision. As it turned out, my brain is so underdeveloped that I didn't even notice a difference.

A few years later, I started getting "floaters" in my vision, little bits of debris that drifted across my vision like microscopic squid and jellyfish.

I self-diagnosed by googling "WTF is Wrong With Me?" and learned that I had "post vitreous detachment." Basically, my eyeballs were starting to shed parts of the retinal wall.

These detached parts then wander around the jelly in the eyeball, creating a feeling of looking at the world through a snow globe filled with bug parts.

I went to the eye doctor to get it fixed, but was told that my PVD wasn't bad enough to warrant sticking a needle in my eyeballs, sucking all the juice out, and refilling them with clean wiper fluid. I heartily agreed before the doctor even finished describing the procedure.

It wasn't over. A couple of years ago, my vision began to get dim. I wasn't concerned at first because I thought it meant I'd have a reason to use weed. But that's for glaucoma.

Unfortunately, what I actually had were cataracts, which required — you guessed it — sticking sharp things in my eye, sucking the cataracts out, and inserting artificial lenses.

It sounds worse than it actually was. By the time they got around to sticking anything sharp in my eyes, I was so high they could have performed the procedure with hedge clippers and I wouldn't have cared.

Finally — and this is the worst part — I'm back to glasses. Because of a change in health care plans at The Tribune, I had to find a new eye doctor to update my computer glasses.

I chose Dr. Jodie Johnson at Riverton Family Vision through the very extensive process of driving past his office and seeing the sign. If this sounds haphazard, it still worked.

When Dr. Johnson came into the exam room on Monday, he was wearing a completely bizarre safari costume with a pith helmet, an oversized pair of Buddy Holly glasses and a fake plastic mustache. It seemed a good time for a question regarding his credentials.

Me: "Have you ever dropped somebody's eyeball on the floor?"

Him: "Couple of times. But I put them right back."

It may have been Halloween, but I still think I found the right doctor.

Robert Kirby can be reached at rkirby@sltrib.com or facebook.com/stillnotpatbagley.