How does a blind guy drive?
The glib answer: very carefully.
The current true answer is that I don’t. Or I don’t drive much or often, anyway The most recent excursion was really when I shouldn’t’ve. This phase of "elderly adolescence" that I find myself in overcame me a couple weeks ago, a few days before the last setback.
The entire field of vision is blurred and grayed out by the setbacks releases. As each floater absorbed into the eye, it left a greater haze behind and has proven more of a barrier to the pupil. The entire effect and disability is hard to describe because there’s multiple problems in the eye.
The pupil problem leaves me unable to quickly adjust between changes in brightness. Highbeams flashing in my eyes at night needs more than a momentary readjustment; it can blind me for minutes. N the daytime, the light seems to stay in the eye.
It is as if I am constantly looking through fog. The further away something is, the more heavily obscured it seems. When the sun is shining, it is like early morning fog, aglow with glare.
I did not have those problems when I resumed driving in late Spring 2010. The main problem then was the field of vision. I was used to being blind in one eye, but the PRP procedure had diminished the left eye’s field of vision to a sphere at the edges of the cataract lense. I adjusted to that largely by avoiding left had turns or street crossing at uncontrolled intersections. This focused me on just watching for traffic from the left rather than having to jerk my head back and forth in looking for multiple directions of approaching traffic and timing each side. Yes, I dud circle some block to make three right turns for the end accomplishment of the left turn I needed.
Highway driving was actually quite easy. I’d get in a non-merge lane and stay there until before my exit. I could see any distance I was looking at. So highway travel was actually quite comfortable. I had made a run to Nashua, New Hampshire on Columbus Day 2010. That had been a great day, the first to harken back to the pre-hemorrhage filled with 65 mph freedom accompanied by some favorite CDs in the deck.
Up through the release of the first retina hemorrhage (as opposed to the full blood vitreous hemorrhage triggered by a dose of Cialis) the only real "danger" I posed as a blind driver was a reduced ability to prevent accidents that would be caused by other people’s carelessness.
This changed after the first setback, just weeks after that soul-soothing trip to New Hampshire.
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