Got my new bifocals Friday. Whoo-ee! I can see again! Indeed, everything is so supernaturally sharp and clear, it almost doesn't look real.
I am enjoying the heck out of my new surreal vision!!!
Showing posts with label vision. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vision. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Saturday, October 11, 2008
part 2
So finally my old glasses are so scratched I can hardly see out of them even if the prescription was still appropriate, which it's not. I seem to be developing good old age-related farsightedness on top of my lifelong nearsightedness and maybe it's time for bifocals (ugh!). This is aside from the scary right eye vision loss. And on top of all that I know I'm going to have to qualify again at the rifle range soon for my job. I haven't had to do that since before the vision loss started. I'll never qualify with my eyesight the way it is now, and my glasses all scratched up and outdated. It's time to bite the bullet. I have to get new glasses. I have to face reality in an eye doctor's office.
Of course I don't have a regular eye doctor, as I don't have a regular anything else doctor either. But one of my co-workers has this eye doctor who she says is an absolute artist when it comes to fitting you with the correct prescription, so off I go to this wonderfully sweet, kind, gentle, soft-spoken Korean eye doctor. She does all the usual tests and then some others I've never had before. She puts in the drops and shines the bright lights (which glare excruciatingly in my hyper-sensitive left eye, and, frighteningly, disappear completely in my half-blind right eye). She has me look into the thing like a video game and hit the clicker every time I see a light wink in my peripheral vision. She only has me do it with my good eye, though. I'm thinking I could have done it with my bad eye as well - I still do have peripheral vision with that one, after all.
Dr. Ma is very concerned. "Your left eye is better than your last prescription" she tells me. "And the optic nerve is very healthy. But your right eye - " She pauses. She is trying to break it to me gently. She's so sweet. I know it's serious. I've known it for a long time. I was just too chicken to find out before now. But now I'm ready. Better late than never, eh? "Your right optic nerve is - very ill" she says.
"Very ill." Aw. That's such a mild way of putting it. She wants me to come back tomorrow (tomorrow!) and see her colleague who has more expertise "with these sorts of cases".
Okay. So I take a half day off which ends up being a half day + an extra 45 minutes (good thing my boss is a fairly flexible type), and I sit through another eye exam. More drops, more excruciatingly bright lights, and I have to wear a protective film strip behind my glasses for the rest of the day to protect my dilated pupils. Shit, if I'd known it was going to be like this, I would have made the appointment for the end of the day instead of for lunchtime!
So after all this, the colleague with the expertise tells me that my right eyeball is stuck, not rotating properly, and something is causing "a problem" with the optic nerve. It might be a thyroid problem, it might be a "mass". He doesn't want to say "brain tumor". He doesn't want to scare me. He doesn't want to say anything definitive without further tests. "You should probably get an MRI" he says. He's going to refer me to a neuro-opthalmologist.
My health insurance is a PPO instead of an HMO. "That's good" he says. "This way we can send you where we want." The one they want to send me to has an office 15 minutes from my apartment. But he's booked up months in advance. The expertise colleague calls the office and wangles me an appointment for next week.
"Can I still get new glasses?" I ask. "I really need new glasses, look at these!" "No, I don't want you to throw your money away if your vision might improve" he said, and sent me off to the neuro-opthalmologist.
So I still need new glasses!
Of course I don't have a regular eye doctor, as I don't have a regular anything else doctor either. But one of my co-workers has this eye doctor who she says is an absolute artist when it comes to fitting you with the correct prescription, so off I go to this wonderfully sweet, kind, gentle, soft-spoken Korean eye doctor. She does all the usual tests and then some others I've never had before. She puts in the drops and shines the bright lights (which glare excruciatingly in my hyper-sensitive left eye, and, frighteningly, disappear completely in my half-blind right eye). She has me look into the thing like a video game and hit the clicker every time I see a light wink in my peripheral vision. She only has me do it with my good eye, though. I'm thinking I could have done it with my bad eye as well - I still do have peripheral vision with that one, after all.
Dr. Ma is very concerned. "Your left eye is better than your last prescription" she tells me. "And the optic nerve is very healthy. But your right eye - " She pauses. She is trying to break it to me gently. She's so sweet. I know it's serious. I've known it for a long time. I was just too chicken to find out before now. But now I'm ready. Better late than never, eh? "Your right optic nerve is - very ill" she says.
"Very ill." Aw. That's such a mild way of putting it. She wants me to come back tomorrow (tomorrow!) and see her colleague who has more expertise "with these sorts of cases".
Okay. So I take a half day off which ends up being a half day + an extra 45 minutes (good thing my boss is a fairly flexible type), and I sit through another eye exam. More drops, more excruciatingly bright lights, and I have to wear a protective film strip behind my glasses for the rest of the day to protect my dilated pupils. Shit, if I'd known it was going to be like this, I would have made the appointment for the end of the day instead of for lunchtime!
So after all this, the colleague with the expertise tells me that my right eyeball is stuck, not rotating properly, and something is causing "a problem" with the optic nerve. It might be a thyroid problem, it might be a "mass". He doesn't want to say "brain tumor". He doesn't want to scare me. He doesn't want to say anything definitive without further tests. "You should probably get an MRI" he says. He's going to refer me to a neuro-opthalmologist.
My health insurance is a PPO instead of an HMO. "That's good" he says. "This way we can send you where we want." The one they want to send me to has an office 15 minutes from my apartment. But he's booked up months in advance. The expertise colleague calls the office and wangles me an appointment for next week.
"Can I still get new glasses?" I ask. "I really need new glasses, look at these!" "No, I don't want you to throw your money away if your vision might improve" he said, and sent me off to the neuro-opthalmologist.
So I still need new glasses!
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Back to the beginning, part 1
I'm not exactly sure when I first noticed the problem. It's not like I ordinarily go around closing one eye at a time to see how the other eye is doing. I tend to think it was sometime around the autumn of 2006. My vision started getting a bit more blurry than usual. Hm, time to get new glasses, I thought. The low slanting light of autumn was causing more glare and discomfort than I ever remembered noticing before.
At some point I must have closed my left eye for some reason. Maybe I got something in it and closed it to rub the irritant out. I don't remember. I don't remember the first moment, the first discovery. All I remember for sure is that it wasn't gradual.
I'm nearsighted, have worn glasses since 5th grade. My right eye has always been weaker than my left, but I could always see out of it. All of a sudden I was was shocked to find out that my central vision in that eye had completely disappeared. My peripheral vision was still okay, but about 40% right in the center simply vanished into a undifferentiated gray fog.
Oh my God, I'm going blind. That was my first thought. Macular degeneration? Cataract? Diabetes? I found a site on the Internet that purported to show what the world looked like to a person suffering from any of those things. None of them matched my central gray foggy nothingness.
A reasonable person would have hustled themself off to a doctor post-haste. A reasonable person would waste no time when it came to a question of saving their sight. But I am not a reasonable person. I am a person ruled by fears and phobias. And I have an utter phobia of doctors. I think that this is the Universe's way of laughing at that particular quirk of mine.
So I dawdled. I procrastinated. I indulged in wishful thinking. "Maybe if I ignore it, it'll just go away." Hah! Even I knew that hope was completely preposterous. 40% of the central vision in my right eye had simply stopped. This would fix itself on its own? Don't be ridiculous.
So I grieved. I mourned. "I'm going to go blind" I wailed to myself. I'm a visual artist, fer cryin' out loud. This is like Beethovan's deafness. What could be more horrible?
I spent my days driving around, staring out at the world. "But I can still see that - and that - and that ... " I would argue with myself. Looking at leaves, cars, the curb, license plates. I could still see. I could still see details. I could still see sharp edges at the borders of things. Even though sometimes it felt like I was seeing double, I could still see. So maybe it wasn't really that bad? I would think hopefully to myself. Oh yeah, sure, right! I would immediately scoff right back. Face the music, kiddo. You're going blind.
I was sure it was macular degeneration, because you lose central vision in that, too. I am over 50, after all. That's when it tends to hit, I read. There's no cure, but there is a treatment to slow down the vision loss. The treatment sounded so painful that I had to stop reading. And the illustration I found on the Internet looked nothing like what I've been experiencing. Central vison was replaced by a solid black hole. Mine isn't black - it's foggy gray - maybe that's not what I have -
So then naturally my hypochodriacal next thought was that I must have a brain tumor.
Even though I can't stand going to the doctor and will avoid it at all costs, I am a terrible hypochondriac. I think this stems from ten years of no health insurance and constant fears of being unable to afford health care. Each little ache and pain immediately turned into "Oh my God, it must be cancer, I'm gonna die." Those ten years were fortunately unmarked by any illness or injury at all, other than a bad cold or two, but the fear never really left me.
So here I am with this weird and annoying foggy gray spot where my central vision used to be, terrified of what it might turn out to be, terrified of losing my driver's license and with it my job, and so I don't go to the doctor. I don't go and I don't go and I don't go.
At some point I must have closed my left eye for some reason. Maybe I got something in it and closed it to rub the irritant out. I don't remember. I don't remember the first moment, the first discovery. All I remember for sure is that it wasn't gradual.
I'm nearsighted, have worn glasses since 5th grade. My right eye has always been weaker than my left, but I could always see out of it. All of a sudden I was was shocked to find out that my central vision in that eye had completely disappeared. My peripheral vision was still okay, but about 40% right in the center simply vanished into a undifferentiated gray fog.
Oh my God, I'm going blind. That was my first thought. Macular degeneration? Cataract? Diabetes? I found a site on the Internet that purported to show what the world looked like to a person suffering from any of those things. None of them matched my central gray foggy nothingness.
A reasonable person would have hustled themself off to a doctor post-haste. A reasonable person would waste no time when it came to a question of saving their sight. But I am not a reasonable person. I am a person ruled by fears and phobias. And I have an utter phobia of doctors. I think that this is the Universe's way of laughing at that particular quirk of mine.
So I dawdled. I procrastinated. I indulged in wishful thinking. "Maybe if I ignore it, it'll just go away." Hah! Even I knew that hope was completely preposterous. 40% of the central vision in my right eye had simply stopped. This would fix itself on its own? Don't be ridiculous.
So I grieved. I mourned. "I'm going to go blind" I wailed to myself. I'm a visual artist, fer cryin' out loud. This is like Beethovan's deafness. What could be more horrible?
I spent my days driving around, staring out at the world. "But I can still see that - and that - and that ... " I would argue with myself. Looking at leaves, cars, the curb, license plates. I could still see. I could still see details. I could still see sharp edges at the borders of things. Even though sometimes it felt like I was seeing double, I could still see. So maybe it wasn't really that bad? I would think hopefully to myself. Oh yeah, sure, right! I would immediately scoff right back. Face the music, kiddo. You're going blind.
I was sure it was macular degeneration, because you lose central vision in that, too. I am over 50, after all. That's when it tends to hit, I read. There's no cure, but there is a treatment to slow down the vision loss. The treatment sounded so painful that I had to stop reading. And the illustration I found on the Internet looked nothing like what I've been experiencing. Central vison was replaced by a solid black hole. Mine isn't black - it's foggy gray - maybe that's not what I have -
So then naturally my hypochodriacal next thought was that I must have a brain tumor.
Even though I can't stand going to the doctor and will avoid it at all costs, I am a terrible hypochondriac. I think this stems from ten years of no health insurance and constant fears of being unable to afford health care. Each little ache and pain immediately turned into "Oh my God, it must be cancer, I'm gonna die." Those ten years were fortunately unmarked by any illness or injury at all, other than a bad cold or two, but the fear never really left me.
So here I am with this weird and annoying foggy gray spot where my central vision used to be, terrified of what it might turn out to be, terrified of losing my driver's license and with it my job, and so I don't go to the doctor. I don't go and I don't go and I don't go.
Friday, October 3, 2008
Dagnabit.
I am not going to bother with paragraphs today, except for this one. This will be fairly stream of consciousness because I have to get this stuff off my mind just now.
So I went for the three and a half hour eye exam with the neurologist eye doctor today, and he said the same thing the second eye doctor said - that it's either a thyroid problem or a brain tumor. Only even he would not say the words "brain tumor". "It might be a tumor" he said. It's a little like the one and a little like the other and not quite exactly like either of them, not exact enough for a real diagnosis. Nope, we need to do more tests. So now I have to go for two MRI's, one of my brain and one of my eye. I had to ask where to go to get them. He looked at me as if I had suddenly started speaking pig Latin. "Well, you could go across the street" he said. I'm not that stupid. I am actually aware that there is a gargantuan hospital across the street from the specialist eye center. No, mr. fancy eye doctor neurologist guy, you're not helping. "I'm the one who never goes to doctors, remember?" I said to him. "I have no idea how to navigate the health care system." And I never wanted to have to learn. I was kind of hoping I'd just live to a disease-free moderately mature oldish age and then one day just keel over suddenly, never having darkened the door of a doctor's office my whole life long. I have a horror of doctors. So naturally and of course it is now my karma to have to be seeing more doctors than you can shake a stick at. He realized how clueless I am. He gave me explicit directions to the MRI office in the gargantuan building across the street, thank you, that's what I was asking for. So I put on my little temporary celluloid sunglasses to protect my eyedrop-induced dilated pupils from the overcast daylight, walked into the gargantuan building across the street, and made two appointments for the two MRI's. I made one appointment for a Saturday and one for 6:45 a.m on Yom Kippur morning. I always take Yom Kippur off from work, but I don't go to synagogue anymore, so that was perfect. I can quietly go and get my brain scanned and nobody at work will know about it. It's bad enough I couldn't think up a good enough excuse to get today off when we're already short-staffed, so I told the truth and said I had to go in for a doctor's appointment. I didn't say why I had to see the doctor though, and it's nice that they're not allowed to ask. I had to sign a Hippo form (honestly, that's what I thought she said) - the one about who, other than doctors, they are allowed to share my medical information with - and it was lovely to check off the box labeled "Nobody". No spouse, no child, no other person. I authorize NOBODY to know about this. Yes! I decided long ago that if I ever got a serious illness I would try to keep it a secret. Lo and behold, now's my opportunity. Lucky me. I have lots of reasons for not wanting anybody to know. And I do mean not anybody. Not my parents, not my siblings, not my friends. I don't want to burden the people closest to me with a terrible knowledge they can't do anything about. I don't want to find myself talking about it all the time, or at all for that matter. I don't want people treating me differently or feeling sorry for me. I don't want to find my conversation suddenly taken over by the subjects of doctors, treatments, symptoms, diagnoses, insurance, etc. etc. etc. And I don't want to find myself getting all self-absorbed and dramatic, as I've seen some people do. I would just rather not let anybody know.
On the other hand I do feel a need to tell somebody, to talk about it a little bit, just to get it off my chest because it is a little too sharp to entirely hold inside in silence. Like letting out a burp.
So, here we are. God bless the Internet. I can talk about it to total strangers and nobody gets hurt. Now I've told you, and I feel much better. Thanks for listening.
I'll be back with my inspirational words of wisdom when I think of some.
So I went for the three and a half hour eye exam with the neurologist eye doctor today, and he said the same thing the second eye doctor said - that it's either a thyroid problem or a brain tumor. Only even he would not say the words "brain tumor". "It might be a tumor" he said. It's a little like the one and a little like the other and not quite exactly like either of them, not exact enough for a real diagnosis. Nope, we need to do more tests. So now I have to go for two MRI's, one of my brain and one of my eye. I had to ask where to go to get them. He looked at me as if I had suddenly started speaking pig Latin. "Well, you could go across the street" he said. I'm not that stupid. I am actually aware that there is a gargantuan hospital across the street from the specialist eye center. No, mr. fancy eye doctor neurologist guy, you're not helping. "I'm the one who never goes to doctors, remember?" I said to him. "I have no idea how to navigate the health care system." And I never wanted to have to learn. I was kind of hoping I'd just live to a disease-free moderately mature oldish age and then one day just keel over suddenly, never having darkened the door of a doctor's office my whole life long. I have a horror of doctors. So naturally and of course it is now my karma to have to be seeing more doctors than you can shake a stick at. He realized how clueless I am. He gave me explicit directions to the MRI office in the gargantuan building across the street, thank you, that's what I was asking for. So I put on my little temporary celluloid sunglasses to protect my eyedrop-induced dilated pupils from the overcast daylight, walked into the gargantuan building across the street, and made two appointments for the two MRI's. I made one appointment for a Saturday and one for 6:45 a.m on Yom Kippur morning. I always take Yom Kippur off from work, but I don't go to synagogue anymore, so that was perfect. I can quietly go and get my brain scanned and nobody at work will know about it. It's bad enough I couldn't think up a good enough excuse to get today off when we're already short-staffed, so I told the truth and said I had to go in for a doctor's appointment. I didn't say why I had to see the doctor though, and it's nice that they're not allowed to ask. I had to sign a Hippo form (honestly, that's what I thought she said) - the one about who, other than doctors, they are allowed to share my medical information with - and it was lovely to check off the box labeled "Nobody". No spouse, no child, no other person. I authorize NOBODY to know about this. Yes! I decided long ago that if I ever got a serious illness I would try to keep it a secret. Lo and behold, now's my opportunity. Lucky me. I have lots of reasons for not wanting anybody to know. And I do mean not anybody. Not my parents, not my siblings, not my friends. I don't want to burden the people closest to me with a terrible knowledge they can't do anything about. I don't want to find myself talking about it all the time, or at all for that matter. I don't want people treating me differently or feeling sorry for me. I don't want to find my conversation suddenly taken over by the subjects of doctors, treatments, symptoms, diagnoses, insurance, etc. etc. etc. And I don't want to find myself getting all self-absorbed and dramatic, as I've seen some people do. I would just rather not let anybody know.
On the other hand I do feel a need to tell somebody, to talk about it a little bit, just to get it off my chest because it is a little too sharp to entirely hold inside in silence. Like letting out a burp.
So, here we are. God bless the Internet. I can talk about it to total strangers and nobody gets hurt. Now I've told you, and I feel much better. Thanks for listening.
I'll be back with my inspirational words of wisdom when I think of some.
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