One of My Worst Fears Dodged...For Now

            For the past six months, I have been walking around with a large, heavy object figuratively hanging over my head. Sometimes I picture it as a ton of bricks in a net, or a cartoon-like heavy combination safe, or an anvil. The imagery change, but there it is. July 6 was the day I found out if it – whatever it was - will crash down on me or not.

            Six months ago I went to my optometrist for my annual eye exam. My vision began faltering when I was in middle school. By high school I had to get glasses, which didn’t bother me as it helped my headaches immediately and improved my appearance anyway. On the other hand, the downward slide of my vision was troubling. Each year my eye doctor would tweak my prescription accordingly as my eyes deteriorated. I am nearsighted, with my left eye adding in a bonus case of astigmatism. Eleven months or so after each adjustment I’d start noticing I was having problems reading smaller signs on the road and I’d start getting those blasted headaches again. Another change in my prescription, another temporary relief.

            Finally, around my thirtieth birthday, my eye doctor informed me my vision was still good when wearing my glasses. I didn’t need an adjustment. I was elated, and since then my vision has leveled off. I haven’t needed a new prescription in years. When I went to my appointment this past January, I felt confident I’d get the once-over, tell the eye doctor the usual, such as “choice one looks better than choice two, the lines are parallel…now, I see two dots….now, yes I can see your hand to the left, right, top and bottom,” and be on my way.   

            This visit involved one additional test. It was an in-depth photo of my retina. I put my face up to a camera, putting my chin in a chinrest like that “puff of air” test, only this time a bright light flashed and a picture was taken of the back of my eye.

            That’s how he found the dark spot.

            He showed me the picture. The right eye looked just right. The round spot where the optic nerve meets the eye looked great, the blood vessels in the eye looked strong and healthy. But in the picture of my left eye, a dark spot on the macula was obvious. It was different shades, and irregularly-shaped, like how mountain ranges are depicted on maps. He said this spot was troubling.

            He called it an epiretinal membrane. There is thin bit of tissue on the retina, about the same thickness as a piece of cellophane. This area needs to be smooth to facilitate proper vision. An epiretinal membrane is like crumpling up a piece of paper.  You can straighten out a piece of paper after it’s been crumpled, but it will never go back to being perfectly smooth again. That membrane is a crumpled up spot on my eye.

            So what did that mean? Was this serious? Well, it could go either way. It all depended on whether the spot was stable or growing. It may have been in my eye for decades, all the way back to childhood at that same size. Since I had never had that test done before January there was no way to tell. I would have to come back July 6 to find out if it was expanding.

If the spot showed growth, I faced macular degeneration. That means slowly, over the course of the next ten to fifteen years, the central vision in my eye would get darker and darker until finally I would no longer be able to read or recognize faces, I would only have peripheral vision at best. It’s rare for that to happen at my age (I’m 36), but it happens. This version of macular degeneration has no treatment or cure at this point.

My vision would go from this...

...to this, with that spot gradually expanding

The doctor gave me a piece of paper with a grid on it. Once I month, I was to cover my right eye and look at the center of this grid. If I noticed any of the lines appeared wavy, or if there were blank spots on the grid, or if I noticed I was having difficulty seeing the sides or corners of it in my peripheral vision, I was supposed to let him know. Since there’s no treatment or cure, I’m not sure what good telling him was going to do, but I over the next few months I looked at my grid faithfully. The problem is, I wasn’t sure what I was seeing and what I wasn’t.

Your mind plays tricks on you, we all know that, and mine was feeling particularly mischievous. Every little “floater” that drifted by registered in my mind as a sign the dark spots were coming. Anytime I woke up and rubbed my eyes and things seemed a little extra blurry in the morning made me wonder if it was starting. Was it coming on so slowly I’d never noticed it before? Or was I just being flat-out paranoid now? It seemed like I could see okay, but was that spot to my left blurrier than usual? When it got to dusk did it seem darker to my left than on my right? It sure seemed that way sometimes.

I said very little about this to anyone. There’s nothing anyone could do about it anyway, and why worry people? But I could feel the shadow of that weight hanging above my head as the months went by.

I began to think about what would happen if it were all true. If I went blind. Since I was a very young child reading has been one of the most important things in my life. I’ve always proudly proclaimed I have been in the middle of reading at least one book - and almost always more than one – continually since I was in grade school. I devour magazines such as Sports Illustrated, The Economist and The New Yorker, and others on my weekly trips to the bookstore. Reading is a large part of who I am.

Writing is too, of course. It’s more than just this blog, it’s the emails I write to friends and the novel I’m perpetually hammering away at. Dictating into a recorder as a writer just doesn’t work for me. I need to see it on the page. It’s the act of typing that allows for a bit of reflection as my fingers tap out the words. Plus I need the visual of the sentence on the screen, the ability to see the story there. A recording of my voice would make editing, changing and rearranging far more difficult, perhaps even too maddening to bother with.

Then there was the part about not being able to recognize faces. The idea of my friends and family’s faces fading into nothing but memories tied knots in my stomach. My nephew would be 12-17. I’d miss seeing him grow into a man. I’d miss my friend’s smiles when I crack them up with a joke. I’d miss the looks of happiness on my family’s faces when I arrived home after a long drive for the holidays.

Long drives? There would be no more drives. I’d spend the rest of my life confined to the passenger seat, rolling past a countryside I’d never get to enjoy.

            Losing those things would completely change who I am as a person. It would have to completely re-define myself. What would I find to do? I could listen to sports on the radio and still follow it, yes. I suppose that would be tolerable. But I’d lose movies, another thing I love.

            It would happen gradually over ten to fifteen years, putting me at 46-51 and blind. I’d have decades to go statistically, with everything with which I define myself taken away. Not to mention, just on the level of someone who doesn’t want to spend the rest of his life alone, who would ever want to be with a blind guy? These are the thoughts that flew through my head daily. I began wondering if I even wanted to live a life like that. I’d try to shake it off, but those thoughts would make me feel so utterly sad.

            On July 6 they took another picture. After ten very long minutes the optometrist told me the spot on my eye was the same size it was in January. It wasn’t growing. He said I would come back for my regular eye exam in January and we’d check the spot again. It may decide to start growing at any time. Hopefully it will just sit there forever, a wrinkle in my eye that doesn’t bother to leak any fluid or expand. So far, it’s decided to let me keep my vision.

            I exhaled a deep breath, and we were both grinning as I shook his hand to leave. The feeling of relief was palpable in the air.

            So while I still worry, the weight above my head feels a little further up above now. The words that appear on my Nook seem a little brighter, and when I go to Barnes & Noble this weekend I’ll savor my copy of The Economist and The New Yorker with a little extra enthusiasm. I also have a party to attend with some friends Friday. I’ll be even happier than usual to recognize their faces.

            NOTE: By the way, if I had found out the spot was growing I was going to put this link toward the top of the page. It’s a column by one of the all-time great newspaper columnists, Jim Murray. I thought of it immediately after receiving the news about the dark spot, and one of the first things I did after my January appointment was to read it again. Murray a better writer than I’ll ever be, and this piece is one of his best and would have been right on-topic. I’ll put in the link anyway, so do yourself a favor and read a master at work:

Jim Murray's Column From the L.A. Times