Good news/bad news

Today is my birthday. I am getting past middle age now. My crisis, however, is just beginning.

Yesterday, I went to the ophthalmologist at the Veteran’s Hospital in Memphis. I wanted a second opinion, or a confirmation, or whatever on news I had been given a few months ago.

It started late one night with a bright flash in front of me like a photographer’s strobe. I panicked and rushed myself to the ER, thinking I might be having a stroke. Good news was that wasn’t it, but the bad news was I needed to see my eye doctor immediately.

A sleepless night and several expensive tests later, I was told that I might have macular degeneration in its earliest stages. Oh great. Nine years ago, the same doctor told me that I had early onset cataracts. I am one lucky person.

Dr. Kelly at the VA was thorough in the exams, and began to question me about family eye history. The only thing I knew to tell him about my dad was that he was not drafted in World War II because his eyes were so bad. He died almost 40 years ago, so I don’t remember much else. Must have been pretty bad to be rejected for that war.

The doctor did all the usual shine the bright light stuff to me, giving me a considerable migraine. He asked a few more questions, saying he wanted to confer with his superior. A few minutes later, she came in and ran that set of tests all over again. She commented that my cataract surgery was a “beautiful job”. Then she sat down. Uh oh.

She said she wished she had better news for me. Yes, you have macular degeneration. Worse in the left eye. Good news: you won’t go COMPLETELY blind, because most people retain some peripheral vision (Yippee.) Bad news: we can’t tell you how long before it gets really bad, and the type you have can neither be corrected nor stopped. (Boo.)

After that, they said little, waiting I suppose for me to break into uncontrollable sobbing. I didn’t. I just wanted to know if I would get any sort of assistance dealing with this when the time was deemed appropriate. My biggest fear is having no mobility training or assistive devices. I’m not going to crawl into a hole somewhere and die. It’s not the end of the freaking world. Adapt, adjust, and get the hell on with it.

Like a story one of my nurses told me once when I was in Intensive Care: A little kid asks his father for a pony. His father tells him to go out to the barn and clean out the stalls. A little friend comes by and asks what he is doing. The boy, shoveling furiously, replies, “With all this shit in here, there’s bound to be a pony in here someplace.”

I’ll find that pony yet. After all, it’s my birthday.