Seeing From the Back of Church

The day-to-day living with myopic macular degeneration has become the new "normal" for me. I try to think back to before my diagnosis in 2019, not remembering what the "before" looked like.

Glasses in my school days

Having worn corrective lenses since I was at least 7 years old, good vision was something I just never really had. Yearly eye checkups at school invariably got me a note to take home, advising my parents that I should probably be seen by an optometrist to better assist in my eye care.

Every year, it seemed, an appointment would be made and a new prescription prescribed complete with new frames. I often felt like the only one who wore glasses, back when it was almost taboo to do so. This cycle continued throughout my elementary days at school.

If my memory serves me right, by my high school days I began to not need new prescriptions quite as often. I still wore very thick-lensed glasses and could not wait for the day when I could jump into contact lenses.

I learned to appreciate modern medicine

Contact wearing in my adult years was quite freeing, and the strength of correctness seemed to be maintained at a steady pace. In my 40s, the talk of cataract surgery became a thing, doing an amazing job of freeing me from daily glasses. To graduate to only needing readers was like an eye holiday for this lifetime glasses wearer.

To my surprise, as I entered into my 60s, the phrase "myopic macular degeneration" entered into my vocabulary. Honestly, I had never encountered this over the years. I quickly was educated. I learned the challenge of eye bleeds and eye injections. I learned to appreciate each checkup after a time when I heard those magic words: "No shot needed." I learned to appreciate modern medicine, but even more so, appreciating not needing a shot at this time was even better.

Adapting to life with low vision

The damage from the above-mentioned bleeds was done and could not be undone. What the bleeds in my eye created was an annoying finger-shaped blob of gray-blue kaleidoscope colors, blocking vision just slightly off mid-center of my left eye’s field of vision.

All this to say, I cannot see well with this eye. I have adapted. I can slightly turn my head and see slightly off-center with that eye or, better yet, use my right eye to carry the burden of seeing things better. So that is what I do.

An example from church

Recently I discovered a handy trick. It is what you do when you have vision challenges. I was sitting in the far back pew at a Sunday service at our church. It was time to sing a hymn, and I could not for the life of me read the number for the upcoming song. I thought for a moment, then reached for my iPhone, quickly snapping a photo of the song board list. I was then able to enlarge this picture, and voila — there it was, plain as day. The upcoming hymn was easy to see.

In other words, with a little adapting, a little ingenuity I can make it work. I hope you can too.