vision

Since I lost part of my vision, things have been interesting.

I can still drive, I can still read, I can still do everything I did before, but it's weird now.

Your eyes work like this: you have the two (unless you're enlightened, then you have three) and the eyes have all kinds of things in them. Rods, cones, retina, all those things. When you have poor vision and need glasses, it is because of your eye health. 

But, those things have to be connected to your brain and central nervous system to take in and interpret the data and this connection enables you to see.

You can have two perfectly healthy eye balls, and still vision loss because the signal between your brain and your eyes is disrupted.

I have a lesion (think scar) on my optic nerve. This is often an early sign of MS. And stroke. Before I lost my vision, my ultimate fear was not death, but it was going blind. 

I started noticing that when I would drive to work in the morning, I could blink my eyes and I would have the after-images of all the lights in my head. Like I could close my eyes and still see lights where they were when my eyes were opened. Not like a super power or anything, but I really confusing burst of light that I couldn't blink away.

I can remember a different time, when I was sitting at my desk and I saw bursts of light around my head and I thought that I wasn't taking care of myself and I was experiencing it because I had high blood pressure. (I do not have high blood pressure and have never).

But I think it started when I was a teenager. I went to an ophthalmologist when I was 12 or 13 because I was seeing colors, and they weren't transparent. At the time, I was diagnosed with ocular migraines.

Weeks before my onset and loss of vision, I was reading a book series. I can't even remember now what it was, and I don't think it was very good, but I became obsessed. I read non-stop. And my eyes started to hurt. They felt like they were swollen and crampy. I remember telling my boss at the time that I felt like I had a headache in my eyes.

Most likely, it was my first lesion developing. 

And now, it's four years later, and it's still not back. People have stopped asking me how my vision is, because I think we've all accepted that it's not coming back.  

But what I find most interesting is that I appreciate what I do see. I love walking outside and seeing things in the different light that seasons bring. I love watching birds. And I don't think I realized those things before I lost my vision. I knew I loved to read and I used my eyes a lot, but I didn't really use them to look around. I appreciate everything I see now. I appreciate every detail that catches my eye. 

I can't think of a way to end this. So bye.