Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Stepping up from the Setback

The first setback in the vision recovery in November 2010 showed various effects. I was back to being uselessly blind for several weeks. Bowling teammates had to identify pins after the first ball. Driving had to stop. Reading was impossible and the TV unclear. I was back to being a toddler who wanted to do so much but couldn’t quite figure out how to get out of the car seat restraints.
The direct effects of the vision ranged from symptoms between retinapathy and vitreous problems. It started as a chunk of a floater with spider-leg tendrils. The chunk faded to a cloud within a few days. The cloud lessened over the following weeks.
My peripheral further diminished. Everything seemed darker. Gridlines were wavy at the edges, to the point that doorframes looked jagged in the middle. My color sense diminished, though I did not quite notice at the time.
I have been off the generic Prozac; diminished capacity depressed me but I did not look at that as a biochemical problem needing biochemical solution. The fact that this setback had resulted in one of my infamous low sugar rages convinced me otherwise. I resumed because the Prozac did control those breaks when my sugar was down.
Things improved by December. In my infinite wisdom, I decided I would drive to my parents’ house on Christmas Eve. I’m a Polack, kinda-sorta. Christmas Eve is supposed to be important. I had missed the prior year. I was better. I thought there was no reason to miss another. I was, after all, better....

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