Sight for Sore Eyes

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body. -- Sir Richard Steele

My eyes had been bothering me, so I had them checked out by an eye doctor.

“Very dry,” she intoned with a cheerfulness and confidence that surprised me. Yes, my left eye had changed and I’d need a new prescription, but it was the medication-induced dryness that apparently caused my distress. The remedy would be expensive eye drops, administered up to 10 times per day, to counteract the effect of medications necessary to keep my asthma under control.

For a week I suffered with the older glasses and dutifully applied the drops, while the new prescription lenses, an advanced type of polycarbonate, were ground. When they were ready, surprisingly, my eyes rebelled from the discipline of the new view. My left eye, the one which had bothered me most, suddenly refused to focus. It ached, then my face ached, then my whole head throbbed. And reading, a pleasure all my life, became onerous.

The thought that I might not be able to see the world that had brought me joy frightened me.
Years ago as a college student, I’d dined with a professor a couple decades my senior. One of his stories involved his retinal detachment, a condition which had been repaired by surgery. Nevertheless, he began several sentences, “When I was blind…”, a clause that has stayed with me ever since, for its ability to induce a kind of panic and revulsion.

I cannot be blind, ever, because the blind cannot read, which is as essential to my well-being as breath. Of course the blind have Braille. Audiobooks can fill in for text. But how can one who’s had a lifelong love with picture books and prose describe the loss which blindness could suddenly bring? Let me list a childhood, in short: Goodnight, Moon; Bedtime for Frances; The Borrowers; Strawberry Girl; Misty of Chincoteague; Ramona the Brave. My beloved wore a library hard cover and a stale and dusty scent. But their small shapes and statures belied their philanthropic largess, granting a quiet child of a vagabond family reliability and solace. Books stood for solidity, consistency, and continuity. To lose my sight, I expect, might be as jarring as losing my parents, tearing away something which had nurtured and taught me throughout life. No Braille can give such pleasure, and no audio can compare. Eyes required. Case closed.

My eyes grew too tired to read. Staying open challenged them. The muscles of my face tensed with pain, and the tension worsened the pain. Working strained my eyes until I had to stop. And the medical diagnosis remained the same: Dry eyes. More drops. Try to get used to the new lenses.

Inevitably, my reading life shrank. Perusing a magazine, I was drawn to the pictures, reading captions and a paragraph or two, but setting it down shortly. Newspaper text taxed my eyes to their limit. Reading text on the computer allowed me to increase the font sizes, but my eyes grew tired in the glare of the screen. In withdrawal, I ached for my text fix but the intensity of my pain held me back. I even wanted to close my eyes when someone spoke to me, because the distraction of my eyes kept me from following a conversation.

My eyes were worn out. Mental atrophy seemed my fate.

Randomly, ironically, a webpage drew me in. It described an exhibit called Dialog in the Dark, in which blind guides take the sighted through dark exhibits, to experience blindness. Oddly, this one short news story reminded me that my limits had not been set. My vision had been altered but not eliminated, and the world was not yet dark. I wasn’t ready to trade my sight for a world of sound, scent, and touch. I had options.

I reverted to my old glasses, which helped me work again. And one day, with a disciplined approach to my eye drops, my ability to read recovered. I read a paragraph, then a page, and upwards of several pages of a professional article I needed to understand. In the evening, the stack of books which sat collecting dust appealed to me. In just an hour, one had captivated me and kept me reading until I’d neglected the eye drop schedule, and dryness made me stop.

A sudden insight, after a morning of wearing the old lenses: perhaps someone had erred. What if there was a disconnect between these new, high-tech lenses and the astigmatism of my dry left eye? The sunglasses I’d had made from the new prescription did not appear to bother my eyes at all, but I had not worn them for extended periods. Thus, a simple scientific experiment, one day at a time: Old glasses, new sunglasses, new glasses. Painless (still dry) two days; pained and unable to function on the third. New lenses would be required in the new frames. And that’s how my sight—and one of the true pleasures in life, reading—was restored.

It’s got me thinking about the frailties of our senses, though, about their inevitable declines. For now, I’m happy to see these words, and share them with you, knowing you’ll be using your sight to hear my voice.


UPDATE: Ophthalmologist opinion: My eyes appear to be extremely and permanently dry, and I will require prescription eyedrops for the rest of my life to preserve my sight.

Note: "Sight for Sore Eyes" was originally published in my closed blog, PROSELADY. Reproduced here by request.