Reprieve

I had gotten used to it.  At first I was determined to fight.  An essay in the New York Times by a famous poet who had lost almost all vision encouraged me, so I booked an appointment with Lighthouse Houston.  I learned about lighting and magnification devices, got a prescription for computer glasses, and was tested to check my ability to drive—yes, to daytime, no to nightime.  I read a New Yorker article about a center for the blind in Colorado where people are taught to prepare meals for sixty with no help and are dropped off in an unknown location to make their way back to the training center on their own.  I couldn’t imagine ever being willing to do such things.  The idea of even going to the training center gave me the willies.  Besides, I didn’t expect ever to go blind.  Just be, as I was,  unable to read street signs, endure the frustration of going back and forth to a new recipe with a magnifying glass while trying to cook, not be able find my phone without a flashlight or read sheet music in my beloved choir practice.  Frustration was built in to almost everything I did, except sleep.  I began pulling inward, distancing from life.   In the odd moment, I wondered if this is how people begin to prepare for death.

Then everything changed.  My retinologist, who treats my macular degeneration, discovered light-obscuring tissue in both eyes that sometimes develops after cataract surgery.  It could be zapped by a laser, so light could come back into the eye. Of course, I booked appointments for first one eye and then the other a few weeks later.  The opthomologist was almost gleeful in telling me about the change in vision I could expect.  So I had no fear when I put my chin in front of a machine that flashed a bright light into my eye and clicked four times.  That was it.  I walked back into the waiting room and, even with macular degeneration, my right eye could see everyone’s faces clearly and read the signs on the receptionist’s desk.  On the way home, I shut my left eye to test what I could see as my husband drove on the freeway.  A month later I put my chin on the brace once again and this time counted fourteen clicks.  Was the left eye more resistant?  So I wondered what the results might be.  This time on the way home I didn’t need to close one eye; the fog had lifted.  I could read street signs, see leaves on trees, read license plates of cars in front of us.  Once again I can read newspapers in the morning and lie in bed at night reading a book.  Typing emails is no longer agony; anxiety while driving has disappeared.  I can almost imagine driving on the freeways again.  I have my old life back.

So I have been taken back in time, given a reprieve. Along with deep gratitude and happiness comes a renewed feeling of responsibility to make the most of things.  But I have to admit there was a certain comfort in being back there.  Coming into renewed life is a fascinating adjustment I am grateful to make.   Yet when the time comes, I know I can go back inside.