Adjusting

I’m coping OK. Not perfectly, but OK, and many people in my life think I have been dealing with the blindness and then the Charcot foot better than they or most people could.
What I miss most and have accepted as unrecoverable is the ability to read. This specific handicap should not have happened. When being "prepared" for cataract surgery, I should have been told about lense options, as well as the risk factors to diabetic retinapathy. I was warned of neither. Dr. Paul Negrey of Koch Eye Associates chose a far-sighted lense for me. This killed my close vision. Glasses greater than 6.0 magnification–twice the strength of what is allowed to be sold as over-the-counter reading glasses here in Rhode Island–still don’t allow comfortable reading.
This is frustrating enough in things I can do–usually–such as figuring out what kind of soup is in an unopened can by recognizing word patterns and shapes and making an effort to remember what varieties I bought in different brands.
I can read the computer only with a series of enhancement. Reliance on a magnifying mouse as one of those enhancements has me unable to see an entire web page as a whole. Before the 2009 Cialis-triggered catastrophe, I had done professional web design. Now I am an even better judge of poor design and navigation. The teenagers and twenty-somethings who lead the field don’t factor in reduced or handicapped vision needs when promoting hover menus, small typefaces and busy layouts.
Audio books can replace novel reading, to certain extent. Rhode Island does have a great interlibrary loan system. I’ve gone through all of Kate Wilhelm’s Barbara Holloway mysteries and Sue Grafton’s alphabet. I’m pushing through Lawrence Block’s body of work with considerable enjoyment. But classics can be problematic because there’s no way to glance over the boring parts.
My unread home library consists mostly of out of print classic science fiction. Not a lot of this is available in audio.
I most miss what had been my greatest source of "childish" escapism, comic books. My interest had been waning for years, but at the time of the vitreous hemorrhage, my long-time favorite Alpha Flight saw publication of a new 8-issue series. My eyesight continued to decline and I was not able to read beyond the third issue. Now I have trouble even discerning covers and logos
Worst, on the most personal level, I have been unable to read the hard-copy versions of the anthologies that have published my work in the past few years. I can recognize the shape of my name in print, and have to content myself with that.
I’m adjusting well, but it’s not always easy.