SomaCow

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.

 

 160: Four Eyes Are Better Than Your Mom [1:00:40m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

SomaCow Media, Inc. is proud to present SomaCow, brought to you in this hour by Dr. Joseph Vo and his superior optometry skillz. You made an old, feeble, sweet smelling man feel safe, and for that, we salute you!

In this, our finest hour, we discussed J’s new glasses (which you can check out in our Ustream Channel, if he ever wears them again), sharks (and other dangerous things that can lurk in the water), and Hurricanoes and Earthaquakes (We’re all gonna die!)

Ah, glasses. I think no single appliance can so instantly, effortlessly, and effectively ostracize a kid from his existing peer group more so than a good set of really bad eyewear. Certainly, in the last few years, huge leaps have been made in the advancement of the frames and lenses, but, at the end of the day, bottom line, you know in your heart that wearing glasses means you are genetically weak. You are the fail. Team captains will never pick you for any position, and will often try to make the ball connect with your face in hundreds of exciting ways. Women can never truly love you, for you will always suffer from blind spermatozoa, forever bumping their heads uselessly against the vaginal wall, never reaching an egg without squinting their teensy sperm eyes. I hate to be the one to break this to you, but it is time you knew. If we all lived on an island, your “friends” and cohorts would set up the bomb, and drop a giant rock on your head, killing you horribly and forever silencing your fat, whiny mouth. SHUT UP, PIGGY!

But honestly, with all the advancements medical science has given us, like shoving glass into your eyeball and choking your retinas, or slicing open the ocular tissue with friggen laser beams and “deflating” your optic nerve to make it more aesthetically pleasing, you should not worry. There is no reason your continued ocular degeneration should keep you from living a healthy and normal life, swimming through the cavernous depths of some dank cave, forever polishing various junk jewelry and arguing with fat hairy hobbits about where the wind blows.

Look, people. I am just in a bad mood. I can see it in my writing. We talked about some great stuff in this episode, and you should give it a listen. We’re very funny, and very witty, and very self-deprecating, and Mickey and J BOTH get in some good ones, so tune in, and check out the following great bands.

• Goldfinger – One More Time
• Ryan Shaw – I Do the Jerk

I, for one, have already referenced Lord of the Flies AND Lord of the Rings in one blog, and I just do not want to wait around and see what will happen next. I think you and I both are better off without it coming to that.

And don’t forget the Newsbomb at the :20. It’s summed up well:

“You took a week that had no news…”

“…and turned it into a bit with no jokes!”