My eye exam

[fbhjr]

Friday my wife and I had our annual eye exam. This was with our regular optometrist who we’ve been seeing for many years.

It was the first time I’ve seen him since my eye problems began 10 or so months ago. He moved me up to a specialist who moved me up to another specialist who gave me the diagnosis of Nonarteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy.

My regular optometrist explained it as "a stroke in your eye".

I had looked up the whole NAION stuff and read all sorts of articles about it, but had never understood it the way he explained it.

My family dies of strokes. My father, his mother, his sister, his cousin, his other cousin and pretty much everyone on that side of my family I’ve ever met that has died, has died from strokes.

For a year I had been thinking of this as something that triggered nerve damage. And, what was a big mystery. I had lots of ideas. Lots of theories. Many guesses.
But, the idea that it is something that my family just gets is both reassuring and scary.
I don’t have to guess what caused it any more. As with the rest of my family, my brain is prone to blowing up. Just the way it is.

(I’m not going to talk about the elves and the cold iron I keep near the front door of our home. I just know a lot about strokes, OK?)

The good news:
Except where the nerves don’t work anymore, I have perfect vision.
20/20, full color, good low light and no signs of any other impending problem.

According to the doctor that is incredibly rare for someone who has had my kind of eye damage to still be perfect everywhere else.
Rare enough that having been an optometrist for close to 50 years, I am the only person he has ever seen where it is true.

As I’ve said before except for it happening at all, I’ve been incredibly lucky about it. I got right in to see all the doctors I needed to see. The steps taken made it recede quickly. No other damage was done to the rest of my sight.

Hope it doesn’t come back…