Double Check

For the fourth time in the past two weeks, Mom and I headed down to the CEI center at Blue Ash (Cincinnati suburb). On the way home today, I think the view and drive was starting to get strenuous and well, boring. To lighten the mood, I suggested the next time we travel down, we play a game–“Like, guess what book I am thinking of!” It definitely lightened the mood. 🙂

Last week, it was the left eye cataract correction on Tuesday, with an immediate follow-up appointment on Wednesday morning. My last left eye check was this past Tuesday, in which the doctor told me that the eye looked really good! To hear this and see that my sight is clear made the day! (I am not certain, but I feel I did better too in reading the letters on the wall.) 🙂

I was born with a lazy left eye. Being a baby, I don’t remember anything, but it seems from stories that up until my eye correction surgery (around 11 months old), I didn’t see clearly. After my surgery, Mom took me outside and I touched every leaf in sight; almost as if there was a whole new world to explore…waiting just for me.

Then came glasses: After my few years of cute, red, circled lenses, I started a new school with new frames. It was not the fact that I was a new student that made me popular; It was the patch that I was required to wear over my right eye, so that my left strengthened. I’m not sure if it worked…when I am tired, my left eye drifts–pictures are evidence. Regardless, every year growing up I would have to take an eye test. Until the seventh grade, when lenses actually could be strong enough in prescriptions for my basic near-sighted blindness, it looked as if I wore goggles. Being about the only kid in elementary school with such spectacles, my peers would ask if they could try them on. “Be very careful,” I would say as I watched them just about fall over when their perfect vision met my blindness.

My eyes reached a plateau around high school, and I only had eye tests so that they could monitor my optic nerves through visual field tests. New glasses frames for college days, and I didn’t have an eye test again until I moved here. All was well until the first time the optic nerves started swelling in 2012. My right eye has been my strong eye. Almost perfect vision, it has carried the weight of both eyes for years. Just like my two blood clots, though in the same leg and same area, the side effects were so vastly different that I didn’t recognize the second clot as a clot. This is exactly the same situation for the nerve swelling. My first experience was a solid black dot in the right eye that would follow my every move. This time, it is the grey “veil” appearance that has changed over the past few weeks since doubling the eye medicine.

Seeming that the “veil” was worsening…there are days when I almost cannot do anything without refocusing my eye or it is as if I am seeing through an appearance like looking out the window through a shade or blinds…at my Tuesday appointment, they scheduled me for a regular visit with my ophthalmologist. After talking all my woes–there are many other observations–he checked my optic nerves and reported that the right nerve was just a bit smaller. Why the nerve is smaller yet then side effects more often and in a larger circumference of the right vision? I am not sure. The good news is that the nerve is not larger! The plan in sight for now is to remain on the twice a day, doubled dose optic nerve medicine, rechecking with a visual field test in late August.

Last night, I woke around 2am…just drifting back to sleep, I started mumbling sorts of prayer requests that came to mind. Then I remember saying, “I don’t want to be blind…” I don’t remember anything after that.

Faith is like being blind; it is like when my eyes are unable to focus in the sunlight and my walker becomes wabbly–and when I am about to stumble, a strong grip from a family or friend holds me in place, Faith holds me in that place…where there is still hope.

“Hope In Sight” by Out of the Grey
(2nd verse) Peace, when it goes
Oh, it leaves me with just one hope
No matter how near or how far
Your light is the brightest star
There is hope at both ends of the telescope tonight

Chorus: There’s hope in sight, hope in sight
If seeing is believing, then call me a believer
Hope in sight, there’s hope in sight
Now that I can see You through the eyes, the eyes of faith