Seeing is believing

I went to my eye doctor today, and the circumstances couldn’t be more different from the last time I paid the ophthalmologist a visit.

For starters, I can see. That wasn’t the case six months ago, when my left eye decided to go on hiatus. And now we know the backstory, the genesis of how I came to get optic neuritis, but not the why.

Why is a question I try not to ask, as in, Why me? That veers too much into self-pity territory. And I’m not one for histrionics.

At this point I figure my life was a perfect storm for getting MS — shingles, mono, epilepsy, head injury, underground house … lots of possible triggers in that grab bag of fun personal history.

But now that we know the optic neuritis was my first taste of MS, it helps put things in perspective. And while I’m scared of it happening again, at least it’s not an unknown entity. I’ll know that the worst of it is ephemeral, and if I’m lucky, I’ll not have any long-term damage.

My eyesight is back to where it was before the optic neuritis. I had the dreadful field of vision test, my third in seven months, and in this one I fell well within the range of normal.

So I guess it’s time to retire the eye patch, save for Halloween and International Pirate Day (although that may have lost some of its charm here lately?).

Because seeing, quite literally, has made a believer out of me. That I can get through the worst, even when the monster wasn’t known.

And now that it is, I’m keeping my eyes on it.