mmerriam | Fun With Vision Loss

One of the things you have to do when you find yourself losing your vision is keep careful track of your surroundings.

I've been having a bit of trouble with this the last few days.

For openers, I've been experiencing instances of seeing things that obviously are not there. I suspect this is my brain trying really hard to fill in the blanks, but still, penciling in a squirrel climbing up the wall inside the coffee shop, that's not helping. And the whatever it was my brain was trying to fill in that startled me enough to make me start batting at thin air in my own kitchen? That was just plain old mean of my brain to do. I have enough trouble without seeing things that aren't really there (or are they?). Weird movements, human shaped forms, odd shadows, and fast moving unidentifiable whattsits. It's a bit like having your own personal haunted house that follows you around.

I've also been getting disoriented spatially for the last couple of weeks. I'm having a terrible time judging distances and depth, and so I keep hitting the end of cabinets and the hood of the range and other such things with my hands and clipping the corners of doorways and furniture with my shoulders, legs, and feet. When I'm on the stairs I just close my eyes, because they're lying to me anyway.

Walking home from downtown Hopkins I slammed my shoulder into the fire hydrant valve that sticks out from the wall of a building. I really thought I was: a) far enough to the right and b) not that close to it anyway. I hit it with my left shoulder at full walking speed. Care to guess which one gave?

Not fun. Not fun at all.

I need to slow my pace down and be more deliberate in my movements, I guess.

In Peace,
Michael