Looking through my eyes…..

 

The latest development in my visual problems (and the reason for writing this blog) has been, well, frightening and traumatic to say the least.  I, as I suspect many people do, took my sight for granted. My sight was my sight – simple as that.  Never gave it a second thought really – opened my eyes, and I could see everything – as normal.

Not any more!

When I open my eyes now, I see things in a very different way.  I remember, when visiting San Francisco, seeing the heavy mist that surrounded Golden Gate Bridge as the sun rose in the morning.  The mist gave it an eery feeling, but you knew that as time passed by, so would the mist, revealing San Francisco in all of its very spectacular glory.

I now wake to that very same mist when I open my eyes.  Only, as the minutes, and hours tick by, the mist doesn’t clear so much.  Eery shadows form and play havoc with my imagination. I struggle to make things out clearly.  In familiar surroundings, I can usually figure out whats around me, based on past experiences and what I know and have learned.  However, take me to an unfamiliar place, and that changes.

That said – my right and left eye differ quite significantly.  With my right eye, I am back in San Francisco trying to make out the bridge through the thick mist. I also see dark coloured shapes that seem to float around, obsuring the view completely.  There is also a light show in my right eye, bright lights, flashes and shards of light going off like fireworks in the night sky.  I often wave my hand around my face, thinking an insect if flying by – only to discover, there is no insect – its just my eye playing tricks on me.

I look at objects and find it difficult to differentiate the object from the background, as the contrast in my right eye just doesn’t seem to be there.  The low level lighting that I permanently see  from this eye  blends everything together.  The I watch the TV, I see “things” moving around the screen, but it is only by listening to the sounds, and what these sounds generally mean, from past experiences that allow me to make sense of what must eb on the screen. (if that makes sense?!)

I close my right eye, and am instantly taken back to my childhood, where ei would look through a kaliedescope and see the psychadelic colours and shapes dance around.  Interspersed by uncomfortable flashes of bright light.  Sometimes, I cannot sleep, as I cannot turn off the light show.

My left eye, however makes out  objects very differently than the right.  Things are much brighter with my left eye. Brighter, but, very blurry – almost too bright sometimes , like you are looking directly into the sun.  I see text on a screen, but the ghosting thats appears alongside every letter makes it very difficult to read, often, near impossible.  Even then, I have to increase the font size greatly.  I cannot, for example read a normal font size letter, see my bank card numbers or see clearly to make a telephone call on my iPhone without making using the accessibility features.

So, if I look through one eye, I get mist and eery darkness.  If I look through he other eye, I get brightness but not clarity.  When I look through both eyes together I get somewhere in between the two. Not completely visionless, but not clear either.

It is amazing how we adapt.  When I just had the diabetic retinopathy, although things were slowly getting worse, I seemed to be able to compensate somehow .  I felt comfortable still doing the normal everyday things I have always done.  Somewhat slower and more carefully, but, I managed all the same.  BUT, when I was hot by the CSR suddenly, thats when My World and how I viewed The World changed, and I soon realised that things were never going to be the same again.

 

The video below is quite good, in that it shows the view that I had. a lot of the time when I had just Diabetic retinopathy.  Floaters, and dark shapes obscuring my view.  But, as I say, things are very different to this now through my own eyes

 

I put the following video on here, because, well, I just like it.  For me, it signifies my belief and hope that just because we see things differently, the differences are what make his who we are, and that through hope, determination and optimism – regardless of how we see things, The World can still be a wonderful place to be a part of.  Heres hoping…right ?