fear of blindness

(this is actually a cataract but surprising similar to the beginningand ending phases of an MS vision episode for me... except not as purple looking )

my mother hates when i say "ive been blind", she says its an over exaggeration (which is an exaggeration in and of itself), but i have been blind.....i mean, i wouldnt know what else to call it. MS has taken chunks of my vision four times, and chaos along with steroids and positive thinking has given it back to me four times, but often i ponder on it being gone forever.

this morning i woke up, and it seemed to me the right eye had that familiar haze. i wake up alot of mornings and fear the haze, almost like a thin lacy curtain hanging over a bay window, the light of early morning playing tricks on the mind.

not that its always a trick, mind you. it has been an episode in the past, or side effect. part of how MS works is that there is scar tissue on the myelin, and so when i heat up, i do often get a haze as like a side effect to my scars, but coolness on back of neck quiets it, so that does not frighten me too much.

i find ways to comfort myself, most importantly the realization that there are other ways to see, and i do see in other ways. i know ive always seen in other ways, but i did not talk about it until my last vision loss in 2001. my therapist, jody, kept commenting on how different i was in my blindness, how much sharper the rest of me was, especially in seeing what was really going on in the room; in me, in her, between us.... i just didnt know how else to connect but to verbalize all the non-visual things i see... i never fully went back to my silence in this, by the way.

...i am still glad this morning was just a trick of the light

Song of the day: raga jog-ravi shankur