I am not a bible person, but today I went from cursing to fearful to begging and all points in between
Since I discovered I had diabetes, I have been taking my meds and eating right. Sure, slip in three lbs of delicious crab, but otherwise, I have been pretty good.
But all weekend long, my eyes were troubling me. Menus, iPhone screens; if I looked at text, it blurred. If I looked at backlit text, my eyes actually wiggled in their sockets, aching and generally feeling uncomfortable. I ended up going to the park and napping, because I couldn’t bring myself to even look at the computer screen.
I wear glasses and a powerful prescription it be at that. 20-500, 20-400, essentially legally blind, and with astigmatism to boot. All day, I was straining my eyes, and I started to wonder if the latest prescription was bad.
I fell asleep with my glasses on, and they were pretty spotty when I woke up, so I asked Nurse if she could use some lens cleaner on them while I dressed. She brought them back and I slipped them onto my face.
I looked at the clock. 55::5588. It was like she had Vasolined my glasses.
“Hey, Nurse, did you happen to use the fat of an unbaptized sea lion to clean these?”
“Um, no?”
I held them up to the light, peering through them. They were pristine. My eyes must have somehow gotten worse?
I looked at the clock. 5:59.
I looked at the TV Screen. “Eddie Izzard: Circle – Actor-comedian Eddie Izzard stops in at…”
I looked at the books on my shelf. Every textbook, fictional novel, and children’s book’s title leapt from the bindings, their tiny author’s print shouting nomenclature mightily at me.
I can see! Without glasses!
All the way to work, I cautiously allowed my soul to sing, as I felt the wind sting my usually protected eyes. Tears formed, as I realized I could see even small print, logos on trucks, road signs, phone numbers on bus benches. My vision was better than even glasses could make them!
After I got to work and calmed down, I started searching terms like “diabetes vision change”. Lots of stuff about how blindness and diabetes go hand in hand, but nothing about my…
Ah.
On a diabetes forum, it seems several people had experienced my condition.
Poor eyesight is typically caused by overly squished or squashed eyeball. I normally have myopia, or near-sightedness. The meds, diet, and exercise have removed enough sugar from my surrounding eye tissue to allow me to see, perfectly.
But it’s temporary. More swelling, and unswelling, will occur. I will possibly experience far-sightedness, and struggle to read newspapers. I might yo-yo around for as long as the next three months. All of the testimonials I read stated that their eyes eventually went back to “normal”, or got much worse, usually from additional degeneration of the eyes.
Scary, when you think about driving. Hell, computer work, too. Pause for a second and think of how often you use your eyes, and then imagine if you could not rely on them from day to day.
So I type this, my glasses nearby, but for now, useless.
You always turn a bit devout at times when you are afraid, or don’t want to lose something.
What I have been asking God, the Creator, or whatever strange and un-understandable entity that has more power over these situations than I do all day is simply -
Please, don’t take my sight back away? Or if you do, don’t take more than I was already used to not having?
Excuse me, while I go cry using my momentarily perfect eyes.
Tags: blood, diabetes, eye, glasses, glycemic, improve, sight, sugar, swelling, tears, vision
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