I apologize for being away from this blog for so long. As you may already know, I was born with a vision impairment. After many years and many eye surgeries, the worst of it finally caught up with me.
At the end of June 2020, I underwent an eye operation to have a plastic cornea installed. The human eye is very delicate. It can only take just so much poking and prodding. The end result of that surgery was a detached retina.
A surgeon was eventually able to reattach my retina. I have been recovering from that process of reattachment for what amounts to 22 months.
The short version of my present situation is that I have very little vision. It's probably not much more than three to five percent of what I used to have. I don't blame anybody for what has happened. I'm not angry about this. It was always a possibility. Ask any gambler and they will tell you that, no matter who you are, you can only beat the odds for just so long.This could have happened to me ten years ago or ten years in the future from today. I accept it for what it is and I am trying to move on.
The simple truth is that it took me about a year and a half to recover my sanity. Take what you see in the movies with a grain of salt. The human mind is tremendously shocked when you actually do experience catastrophic loss of sight. As much as you might expect it, no amount of preparation can ever make you ready for the real thing.
After some thought, I decided that it was a good idea to say something about what happened to me here in this blog. I am dictating the words you are now reading. My wife is typing this post. That's where I am in the process. Over the next few years, I hope to retrain with assistive technologies so that I can get back to full-time writing.
Nobody knows for sure if they can handle something like this until it happens to them. As sympathetic as you might be to family and friends, please understand that your kind words may not be as helpful as you would like them to be.
If you do know somebody who has recently gone blind, please be prepared to give them some space. They're going to need a large amount of time to experience the shock and get over it.
From my own point of view, it's been a lot like falling off a cliff without ever hitting bottom while, at the same time, going insane. Eventually, the severity of what I felt started to lessen. Eventually, my anxiety was mild enough that I could control it.
This process is definitely not over for me. There is a form of grief involved in all of this that has to be dealt with on an individual basis. You've got to work your way through it in your own time and in your own way.
Blindness is not the end of the world, though it will force you to start a new chapter in your life that is very different from anything you have ever done before. I hope that observation is useful.