When I was an early teenager, a part of me was convinced I’d go blind when I became 18. I don’t remember where that belief came from. Maybe a particularly vivid dream or something I read in a book.
Eighteen came and went. I still needed glasses, as I had since early childhood, but no signs of vision loss. It was a weird, silly premonition that I left behind with all the random thoughts and ideas I held in childhood that made no sense as an adult.
By 29, I’d forgotten all about that weird belief. Until this week.
Since I was a very young child, reading and books have formed so much of my life. Books have been intertwined with my identity, with how other people perceive and understand me. Writing is my passion, my spirit, my soul, the thing that fuels my life. The only way I know how to experience life or process the world. Words are everything to me.
Now words swim like they’re underwater. Reading too long gives me a headache. Writing requires large print and a heavier reliance on autocorrect and spellcheck.
Needles and I don’t mix. I’ve become increasingly squeamish about medical stuff as I’ve grown up, which is strange for someone who’s spent as much time in hospital gowns and hooked up to testing machines as I have.
“You’re too young to be experiencing this.” My god, how sick I am of hearing this from medical professionals. The nurses, the doctors, the specialists, the technicians, they look at me with pity and tell me how young I am and the only thought I can muster in response is “And yet, here I am.”
Here I am, in these medical patient chairs and tables, once again. Again and again and again.
A few weeks ago, a blurry (or, blurrier than usual) spot showed up in my right eye’s vision. It went away with my glasses on, so I assumed my prescription just needed an update. Then the blurry spot became shadowy and discolored. I immediately went to my eye doctor. An annoying but temporary swelling of fluid, was the diagnosis. But let’s go to a retina specialist, just to be sure. Just to rule out this other worse thing.
I think I’ve won the shitty medical jackpot in life. It was the worse thing.
“Presumed ocular histoplasmosis syndrome,” I think is what it’s called. I had a hard time absorbing much of what the doctor said, to be honest. And the swelling in the image they took of the back of my eye isn’t a temporary stress response. It’s a blood vessel pushing and poking up where it doesn’t belong. Making words blurry and swimming around, making straight lines wavy, making shadows and blurs and colors look wrong.
The cherry on top? It’s in what used to be my “good” eye, my stronger vision. Guess I can’t call it my good eye anymore.
The doctor said I needed injections, so nonchalantly, like it’s just a routine. In his day, I guess it is. In mine, it’s one of my worst nightmares. Now it’s going to be my new normal. Needles in my eye, every four or six or eight weeks. Maybe a few years apart, if I get really lucky.
Without the injections, the chance I go completely blind in that eye is 100%.
With the injections, we expect to stabilize the problem. Prevent it from worsening. Doctor delivered this part with so much hopeful demeanor.
If my vision improves, that would be a “nice bonus.”
Maybe my left eye will begin to compensate for my right.
Maybe I’ll be able to drive again.
Maybe.
Maybe.
Maybe.
I’m too young for this, I thought. It’s not fair, I thought. Hold it together and don’t pass out while they put a needle in my eye, I thought. Wait until you’re in the car to cry, I thought. Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry.
“How do you feel?” asks my mom and my friends and my therapist. And I love them for it.
But how the fuck am I supposed to answer?