The Indirect Route

In May 2011, I made another excursion to New Hampshire. I told only one friend of the intended trip, just to get input from a respected opinion. I could sense something of a lecture on his lips, but he settled on saying only, "you be careful."
I was careful about everything but time. Even though I had left in early morning, I had dawdled too long and the angle of the setting sun also worked against me. I got on the highway home in the wrong direction. Darkness fell fast, and I was not quite certain of my wrong turn until it was too late. I’d driven only in areas I knew well enough to know where I was going without the use of landmarks that I could not quite see. The first time I got off the highway to turn around, I ended up getting back on in the wrong direction again.
I got off the highway and grabbed a bite at a burger joint. I had tried being subtle by reading the receipt to get my location, but I couldn’t see the receipt either. All forms of vision were getting slowly but steadily worse. I had to ask where I was, always a humbling experience. I was feeling very young and vulnerable and that I had seriously overstepped my bounds.
I remembered the way to the highway from the burger joint. When I got to the big sign that gave directions, I pulled the jeep off the road and got out of the car to read the street sign I otherwise could not see, just to make sure I headed in the right direction home.
I’d gone home to Providence from Nashua, New Hampshire via Worcester, Massachusetts.
It was my last excursion. The experience disheartened me. The third setback let loose within a couple weeks, leaving me less capable even after that setback mostly faded. Even shorter neighborhood trips seemed unworthy of the stress and effort. Even in the summer I was accepting rides to bowling because I did not feel confident driving home in the dark. I simply let go of more and more of my self sufficiency, moreso after my eyes began the Autumn 2011 slow fade without another obvious setback.
For the most part, I had stopped driving by September, 2011.
For the most part...

Plowing Ahead

The Jeep Wrangler I currently own is the first car that ever elicited remarks from friends "This is you." I can understand the analogy. It’s a rugged but stunted vehicle. It’s got one of those attention-getting mufflers, so it is rather loud and obnoxious. It’s gray, which on a Wrangler means it’s multiple shades of gray, simple looking yet complex at the same time. It’s propped up on oversize tires, so it can run through pretty much anything. And it’s a hard top model.
When buying the vehicle, I specifically wanted something that could plow snow. I’d had enough with relying on others to take care of the properties and wanted a vehicle that could accommodate my self sufficiency issues.
After the first setback in November 2010, I stopped driving again. No one took my keys away, nor did anyone have to. I stopped on my own because driving presented a clear and present danger to myself and others.
I was off road again for a number of weeks, but making short trips on my own in December 2010. I already related the trip that made me stop driving entirely at night in "Midnight Ride." (December, 2011) After even the first setback, my eyes could no longer process dim lighting well enough for me to feel safe driving at night.
I could still do OK in daytime, depending on angle of the sun and contrasting areas of bright light and deep shade.
I was surprised to see how well I could plow snow at night. That specific driving task proved easier at night than during the day due to sun glare. At night, the white blankets that covered Rhode Island on a weekly basis for six weeks probed a uniform cover of white that my eyes could easily accommodate. This does not mean I took extra jobs; I stuck only to my property obligations and one neighbor. I dropped the regular gigs outside my neighborhood and took my time. Nighttime plowing also proved easier because I had to contend with fewer cars on the road. The fact that I intimately know the areas where I worked also made the plowing a surprisingly trouble free task, so easy a blind guy can do it.
Unfortunately, the stress and exertion of so much plowing that year took its toll. While not scientifically proven, I am confident that the heavy workload triggered the second setback. I limped home from what luckily proved the last storm of the year with a stringy gray cloud further obscuring my vision. That took me off the road for several more weeks until things recovered enough for me to regain reasonable certainty that I would not endanger others.
I’d been cooped up again and wanted a taste of those old freedoms and my all-important self-sufficiency.
I felt ready for another excursion.

Give Me the Keys, and I'll Drive You Crazy

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.

On the Road Again

My first trip after recovering from the Cialis-induced hemorrhage was a quick "medical emergency" in early June 2010. I’d run out of insulin and needed the evening dose. I wasn’t sure is the Wal-Mart pharmacy was still open. (I won’t disparage Wal-Mart on this. To my knowledge they are the only ones who carry a generic of standard insulin. Even if other pharmacies have begun carrying this, Wal-Mart was the only one for 10 or more years who defied Ely Lilly and Company by carrying it. That saved me thousands of dollars and certainly bought some loyalty.)
Maybe I just didn’t want to ask the roommate for the ride when I was not positive how late the pharmacy was open. Maybe I was just being thick in the head in wanting to drive. The roommate’s on the deaf side and was watching TV at the front of the house. I slipped out the back without a word. Wal-Mart is perhaps a quarter mile down the same road I live on.
I did not have such severe night vision then. I moved slowly and cautiously and made the round trip without incident. I snuck back into the house without the roommate having known I was gone.
My blindness had put me in a position where I had to accept more well intended assistance than I cared for, from the roommate and one other friend in particular. Both of these dear friends have control freak tendencies that grated against my uncontrollable nature with exponential angst as I got slowly better through Spring 2010.
I kept my foray a secret. I made a couple other short jaunts over the next couple weeks, testing the waters of my partially regained abilities in secret from my caring, controlling jailers.
I’m not a very good liar or sneak and have no particular motivation to get good at those types of thing. I’m a bit of a smart ass and like confessing my misdeeds when its far too late for them to matter. The reaction often amuses me. I break out the old childhood stories of sins gotten away with when my parents get on my nerves. I only recently broke out the crown jewel of how I escaped a three day school suspension by asking the vice principal if he had f*d his wife the night before.
My secret excursions lasted a couple weeks before I revealed myself. The roommate generated a lot of noise about it, all white noise to me because I was able to name times and dates when I had been out before and where I went. The fact that I had been on the road a bit without incident left him little he could say.
I didn’t have to hide it anymore. I could drive, even though I remained legally blind.

Actos-ing Up

I "saw" a television commercial for the first time this week. The subject of the commercial was Actos, a Takeda Pharmaceuticals drug used to control blood sugar in Type 2 Diabetics.
The ad was for a lawyer’s class action lawsuit for people who developed bladder cancer after using Actos. This is not the first class action lawsuit ad for alternative insulin users. It seems to me there’s a new one every year, a rate that seems to match the availability of new alternative insulins.
You want to be part of a class action suit? Easy enough. Become a Type 2 Diabetic and take whatever new insulin your doctor prescribes. Don’t ask how new the drug is and how extensive testing might have or might not have been. Certainly do not ask your doctor how many prescriptions he must write before he gets that gold trip to Bermuda.
Your doctor will tout all the good effects of this or any other new insulin. Most and sometimes all of his information comes from the pharmaceutical company that owns the patent on the drug.
The only one likely to profit from diabetic patients taking new drugs is the pharmaceutical company pushing the drug.
The patient is the guinea pig. The pharmaceutical companies are betting on medicare patients being too ignorant to know that they are the lab rats. The pharmaceutical companies get money while the patients get heart attacks or one form of cancer or another from each new blood sugar medication pimped out.
I am a Type 1 Diabetic. I use the old Humulin insulin. I switched to humulin or "Humulog" only when Eli Lilly and Company stopped making old style insulin made from port and beef.
I understand that too many people are so afraid of needles that they will try anything rather than go on a standard insulin form. They need to get over it. Diabetic syringes are so tiny that the injection cannot even be felt most of the time. Chances are, if you developed Type 2 Diabetes, you have a lot of excess flab that can be taking needles without any sensation of pain.
Every case is different and not all Type 2’s need full insulin. Guided by research sponsored by the pharmaceuticals, the medical industry has been changing the definition of "diabetic" and "pre-diabetic" just to increase their customer base.
You can go blindly along with what the tools in the corrupted medical industry tell you, or you can be proactive in your own health and insist on older, effective medications that your doctor actually has some practical experience with among his patients. The older medications are also cheaper because they are not being sold at development-recovering profits or sustaining the advertising industry.
Surely not many doctors are thinking of their patients’ bladder cancers when they’re on the green in Bermuda.

Losing the Great American Liberty

In October 2009, the vitreous hemorrhage that resulted from a dose of Cialis filled the eye with blood. I saw everything through a red glow. I could not drive at night but managed for a while in the daytime, to places I knew. The visual effect those first few weeks was nothing more than looking through rose colored lenses. The discoloration darkened everything, but in the light I could function OK. I pressed on with life.
That changed with the healing process. He blood began to separate from itself and mix into the eye. It contaminated the vitreous fluid and the fluid in the dense existing cataract. This changed the visual effect from simple discoloration to a dense reddish cloud. The cloud obscured everything. Within a couple weeks I was uselessly blind at all things. At that point I stopped driving on my own. No one needed to take my keys away. I am typically responsible for myself and I recognized the dangers I posed to myself and society without needing some catastrophic event to smash the point into my skull.
I was off the road before the end of October 2009. Except for one time, I did not drive until late April 2010. I loved driving almost as much as I loved reading, which I also could not do. I was feeling great losses at this time.
The sole attempt at driving was during the only accumulating snowfall of that season. I felt lucky that it had been a light snow season where the storms all seemed to mystically miss Rhode Island. If I had been well I certainly would have driven to Virginia with the signs on the plow just to make money that year. Transported by teammates and reliant on them to know what pins remained target of the second ball, I still bowled twice per week. Otherwise I stagnated at home.
I almost wish I had some amusing story to relate with the attempt at driving that winter. I got behind the wheel in an attempt to plow my own parking area.
I quickly realized it was not something I could do. The ruddy haze was too blinding.
I carried the expectation that the cataract surgery would restore me. The treatment at the time was "preventative" PRP surgery then cataract replacement, and the doctors fostered those expectations.
Cataract replacement did remove a layer of the ruddy haze. I opened my eyes in bed the night of the surgery and seeing farther and better than I had since childhood.
Then I got up and moved. That was the first I learned of the vitreous fluid problem. An immense pool of blood still resided in the center of the eye. The blood and vitreous fluid acted as oil and vinegar. So long as I was perfectly still, the elements separated and I could see clearly. I could see the bubble of blood floating at the top of the eye. Any movement mixed the bubble with the natural eye fluids.
I’d be going nowhere fast, not until the blood dissipated, and no one could tell me when or if that would be.

Gifts

Last year when my parents asked what I wanted for Christmas, I told my mother that her left eye would be fine. I didn’t care that it wouldn’t match my fiery hazel, just so long as it worked passably. I might have preferred my father’s blue, but his don’t work so well. Both of my mother’s eyes work well enough; I did just fine for almost a decade with only one functioning eye, so surely this seventy-something old broad with a relatively sedentary lifestyle could do with only one. I figured she could take to wearing a patch and train a parrot to sit on her shoulder; those things might match the rapier that she’s usually carrying around tp stab people who try cutting in front of her in line at Wal-Mart. She used to carry a horseshoe in her purse for those occasions, but I guess that got too heavy for her.
I could see well enough to get the look that fell on her face. Maybe she thought I already had a surgeon lined up or something. and that I had forged surgical consent forms like had forged absence excuses and warning slips through high school. That look gave me a brief flash of, well, something. It couldn’t be shame; I am pretty shameless about my sense of humor, and my mother knows that. She’s the one who always preferred Three Stooges over Sesame Street anytime there was conflict between me and an older sibling.. I think her look jarred me with interpersonal disconnection that she didn’t get my dry delivery. She’s my mother. She should know that if I were going to resort to black market solutions to the eye problems, I would certainly take a fresh eye not from an elderly woman, but from an infant. Babies can learn to adjust better to a life with only one eye far easier than an old person can.
I reverted to a more serious answer. There was a bit of scrap lumber and old doors across a few of the properties. I wanted a Seats Craftsman 19.2 volt battery circular saw to easily cut it down to pieces that would fit into the city trash bins. I didn’t get that either; something bout the dangers inherent in blind guys using power tools.
I got a set of deluxe Tupperware with airtight gaskets on the lids and snap locks on each side. That could come in useful for keeping an infant’s eye airtight for an hour or two until I can get it to that black market surgeon.
And my parents also still gave their annual gift: they renewed my AAA membership.