The day my eyes broke

This article was the most difficult that I’ve written.

Not because I’m ashamed of my disability, but because I know that everybody faces their own challenges in life, and I didn’t want to sound self-absorbed.

Actually, who am I kidding? I guess I am also a bit ashamed.

Three years ago, my retina detached. All by itself. Thanks eye.

While a retinal detachment isn’t altogether uncommon, my eyes also have a birth defect called retinal coloboma and my left eye was born lazy and unable to read on its own.

The highly abridged version of my topsy-turvy 2019

It was September 2019. I was on a working holiday in Singapore and one day when I opened my laptop, I noticed a line appear across the middle of the screen. A little confused, I shut down my emails to see if the line would still be there. It was. I then moved my head up and down to look at my screen from different angles. What I noticed was that when my head moved, so did the line. I deduced therefore, that the line was being caused by my eyes and not the computer itself. Specifically, the line was coming from my right eye.

With my vision deterioating, three days later I was at my eye specialist’s clinic and sitting in the consulting room. As I leaned forward into the eye microscope, my doctor steered the machine and navigated the far reaches of the back of my eyes. After a couple of minutes, he thanked me and told me that I could sit back again.

“Your condition is serious,” he began. “Your retina has begun to detach, and you need to have surgery immediately.”

My head whirred as my brain tried to compute what it had just heard.

“Will surgery restore my vision to how it was?” I stammered.

“It’s difficult to say. If the retina detaches too far then it can do permanent damage. This is why we need to act fast.”

Two hours later I was dressed in my hospital gown and being rolled into surgery.

The long road back to a stabilised level of vision

A week after the surgery I went to my eye specialist for a post-op check-up.

I sat down in the patient’s chair and the doctor pulled the microscope over and inspected my eye. He analysed my eye in silence for a good few minutes and then sat back with a stern look on his face.

“While it’s still too early after surgery to get a good look at the retina, I can however definitely see that the retina has detached again.”

My heart sank to my toes. What now?

To cut a long story short, two more surgeries to stabilise the retina and then a fourth operation to replace my cataract engulfed eye lens.

Following the cataract surgery, a bit more laser work and now with some new pairs of glasses, I’ve thankfully passed back below the threshold of ‘legally blind’.

Throughout the whole ordeal I’ve been lucky enough to continue living my life almost as normal.

Low level vision can be kind of awkward in social situations

When I’m standing at the bar, and I want to check a football score as I wait for my turn to be served, I hold my phone one inch away from my eyes in order to try and read the small text. The man next to me stares, laughs, and comments, “Had a bit too much to drink tonight, hey mate?” It wasn’t funny the first time I heard it. Now very self-conscious of people staring at me when I use my phone, I’m now often too shy to use my phone in many public environments with a lot of people around me.

Shared food in low-light restaurant settings is something like my worst nightmare. I don’t want to grab at something on the plate, because I might just be about to stick my fingers into the baba ghanoush. Is that one last chicken wing that’s been left on the plate? No, I’ve just picked up the bones of a piece that’s already been gnawed.

When we communicate with people, our eyes are constantly scanning their face and body for clues. A small twitch of the mouth or raising of an eyelid can signal so much. With these abilities of perception, we can read a room and judge when to keep talking and when to be silent. We know when someone is friendly and engaging vs irritated or aloof.

Unfortunately, a lower level of vision makes it difficult to notice the minute details, especially in lower light. In darker environments, such as bars, not only can I not see the movement in people’s eyes, sometimes I can’t even see their faces at all. Just a silhouette.

Life goes on, one obstacle at a time

As I mentioned at the outset, I’m absolutely aware that I am not the only person living on this planet and nor am I the only person who has suffered some form of injury or disability. My experience has opened my eyes (pardon the pun) to the struggles people face in completing seemingly simple, everyday tasks. My hope with this article is to share a little about my experience and what it’s like to live with the challenges presented by low vision.