Eye, Eye.

In the wild, with my eyesight, I'd probably be lucky to last a fortnight. Without correction I live in a blurry, fuzzy world of amorphous shapes and colors. I would be sure to end up in some large predator's stomach in a less civilized time.

When I was about seven years old I was first diagnosed with extreme nearsightedness and I remember the doctor fitting me with my first pair of clunky, black horn rimmed glasses. In my bermuda shorts, high black socks and florsheims, I cut quite the large fashion picture in my youth. Throw a little astigmatism in with my nearsightedness and I am nearly blind without my specs.

When I was about a year older at the tender age of eight, living in Las Cruces, New Mexico I got shot in the left eye with a b-b gun by a shot fired by a poor mexican schoolmate, a pellet that just missed a vital area and the doctors said I was very lucky to not get blinded.

I don't remember my four eyes coming into play again until I was about eleven or twelve. I was living in Syosset, New York. My friends and I would sometimes ride our bikes on the weekends on the long trip out to Oyster Bay, past beautiful lakes and tall trees. I made a very stupid mistake going down a particular hill on my english racer, applying pressure to my front brake. The bike pitched me ass over teakettle and I landed on my face. Both lenses on my glasses broke like bullet holes and a sheet of blood covered my head. A passerby took me to a hospital and I remember the doctors digging the shards of glass out of my eye, something that has to unfortunately be done while you are completely awake.

The upshot is that I have always been very cautious and phobic about my eyes. I can't touch them and resist having anyone else touch them. I fight with my ophthalmologist over something as simple as an eye drop. I realized early on that contacts were not even a possibility. My percentage of cornea to retina or iris (or whatever the correct optical physiological element is) is such that the Lasix people said that that procedure was also not in the cards for me although there is a chance PRK might work.

Having glasses your whole life is a bit of the drag. Swimming and surfing are more difficult, bar fights are out of the question. When I fought martial arts, I had to use cumbersome goggles when I was sparring.

I read something once about a study, I believe that it was from UCLA, that surmised that the reason jewish men typically are so near sighted and have such a large percentage of males that wear glasses is that jewish mothers  release an extra shot of the testosterone hormone to their male offspring that results in excessive eyeball growth in the last trimester, hence lots of glasses as well as a few other particular attributes that I don't need to go into now.

Anyway I have always been a very visual person and I rely on my eyes in a major way, first as a young artist and painter and now as a person who sells art and antiques. I relate to the world in a visually dominant way.

I remember also reading once about a study  regarding racial distinctions and sensory perception. Blacks are said to be aurally dominant, depending more on their hearing than caucasians. Black linemen were getting called for offsides violations at a higher rate than their white team mates. It turns out that they were actually hearing the whistles before their pasty colleagues or the mostly white referees. Which may point to a need for some sort of racial equalization device in the future to counter perceptual differences. But I digress.

Several years ago I had heart surgery for a murmur and a bad mitral valve. They cracked my sternum like a chicken breast and fixed my ticker. But at the end of the procedure I had an unfortunate occurrence  Amaurosis Fugax. My heart was sending tiny blood clots to my eyes and I was experiencing temporary blindness in my eyes, with a gray curtain obscuring parts of my visual field like a gray steel door slamming shut. Fugax scared the hell out of me and they kept me hospitalized for about five more days. I got to visit a top neuro ophthalmologist, Frishburg and doctors were very worried, the event being an early indicator of the possibility of a giant stroke. Had the carotid checked and finally the symptoms went away but not before scaring the shit out of me.

I read an article last week about a guitar player Jeff Golub, who just lost his sight, very quickly and unexpectedly, and the difficulty he is now experiencing in his life.

I had been thinking that I was overdue to see my eye doctor. Last time I saw him he said that he noticed a particular lattice that leads him to think that I am a candidate for a detached retina. He said that if I saw flashing lights to get to a hospital immediately as time would be of the essence. He was also amazed to see that my prescription was 20/15 corrected, very high for a visually impaired person. I had been told by the Lasix people that my corrected vision was so good that I would never see as well after an operation as I did with glasses.

Last sunday I was at a friend's home when a large circular shape appeared in my left eye's field of vision, an occluded blurry ring. I called the doctor at home that afternoon and he ascertained that it was not a retinal or Fugax problem but what he called a visual migraine. It lasted for about 45 minutes.

I went in to see him a few days later so that he could make sure all was copacetic and he gave me a clean bill. But when he tested my sight I blew him away again. I now read 20/10, which I think is sort of unheard of. The next step is x-ray vision. He held up the microscopic print and I read from about five feet away, I think a first for the office. Must be my intense nearsightedness or maybe some new superpower that I'm not supposed to talk about.

See you around and take care of your eyes.