I am vision impaired

Can you imagine what it is like to have your vision unexpectedly decide to take a break from its day-to-day duty as your personal visual information processor? Well, that is exactly what happened to me last weekend. Now, some would say that I simply strained my eyes from reading too much, but I must point out that this interpretation does not begin to capture the horror of my experience.

Let me recount that experience…I was home all day, alternating between reading the miniscule print that is typical of journal articles, and reading articles or webpages on my computer screen. As day turned to night, and the night stretched further into the morning, I continued to read text on my computer. My eyes began to water and I casually rubbed them. I was typing when an unusual phenomenon occurred. Bright metallic images flashed and faded toward the right side of my visual field. My two eyes decided to start seeing two different things and refused to line up. I discovered that once I looked at the screen, I could no longer see my hands. I tried blinking rapidly, but to no avail. The bright metallic images remained, and I could not focus as I gazed across the room.

Disturbed and alarmed, I decided it was time to go to bed. Perhaps my eyes would be fine in the morning. As I tried to wash my face, my alarm rose to panic. Staring at my face in the mirror, I was fully confronted with the abnormalcy of my vision. The experimental psychologist in me took over and I began a series of experiments to determine the cause of my vision problems. I placed one hand over my right eye and determined that my left eye was seeing normally. I placed my hand over my left eye and came to the swift conclusion that the right eye was the cause of this nightmare. With my left eye blackened out, it could not attempt to compensate for the partial loss of my vision in my right eye. I looked down at my hands and realized that although I could see my right hand, I could not see my right wrist down to my elbow. As I shifted my gaze, my arm came in and out of view. I looked up at my face again to determine just how much of my peripheral vision was gone. With my left eye covered, I scanned the mirror from my face to the left side of the mirror. As my gaze shifted a few inches to the left of my face, I completely lost all trace of my face. My vision registered nothing.

So I decided I better not panic. Just finish getting ready to go to bed and sleep it off. The problem confronted my again as I tried to take my contacts out. Some contact wearers like to look up and to the side as they tug their contact loose. Not me, I stare straight into my eye and pull the contact directly out with my thumb and forefinger on either side of the iris. Well, as I attempted to do this with my right eye, I stared straight at my eye, but could only see half of the operation. I saw my finger against my nose, but my thumb was invisible. I could only hope that I wasn’t about to jab my eye out (which may have been a relief at this point).

In bed, with my eyes closed and shrouded in darkness, once again I saw ghostly images fading in and out, yet so metallic and shiny. Soon my head began to throb and a massive headache developed. With my eyes half closed, I stumbled down the stairs and took some aspirin. Back upstairs, I started to feel nauseous and stumbled over to the toilet and sat in front of it, just in case. Luckily, nothing. So I crawled back into bed and began to feel the strange sensation that I was floating, further exacerbating my nausea (I swear it was just an aspirin). Eventually, the feeling subsided, and I fell asleep around 4am.

The next morning, my vision was back to normal, thank God! But, my eyes felt really sore. So after I finished my paper that was due that evening, I refrained from reading anything. All weekend long, I refused to turn on the computer or watch TV or read articles. Let me tell you, for a graduate student, it felt like punishment. I couldn’t prepare for school the following week. I couldn’t do anything! So I stared out my window at the mountains. I sat and gazed at the ceiling. Finally, I decided to clean my house and unpack a few more boxes.

Unfortunately, for me, I have a large amount of reading to do this weekend and my eyes are starting to give out on me again. What am I going to do?!?! Eat carrots?!?! How can I make it through my program without the proper functioning of what I have discovered to be an essential part of my body?

Oh, my eyes, I beg of you, please stop requesting special treatment. Please do your job like you are supposed to, and do not hinder me from completing my work. Please?!