Month: December 2011

Good morning/afternoon/evening and I see that you found this new personal blog I’ve started. It is part of the laundry list of New Year’s resolutions I’ve made to myself for 2012. Most of the time what I post here will have a less than serious tone… this post is an exception to that rule. Needless to say, I’m glad I found writing again… or that it found me. The name for this blog comes from the fact that when I actually write something down I’ve put a great deal of thought into it. That means I’ve thought more about what I want to write than I’ve actually delved into or researched the problem, issue, or annoyance. With that being said…

Chances are you clicked onto this link because I asked you to and promised you an explanation of what’s happening today. But before I try and begin to explain what is happening today, I feel like it is important that you understand a little bit more about my previous surgeries, history, and experiences. I spent a great deal of time over the last ten years of so wondering if I would ever write it down or even tell it. Up to now, I’ve always let my mother tell my story. Some of you have heard it, many of you have not. Usually, I’ve avoided telling people more than what was ever necessary up till now. I’ll try to sum it up as briefly as I can…

Let me begin with this… I would not be where I am today if it were not for my parents, especially my mother. She never stopped advocating for me or my needs even when many doctors, teachers, and professionals told her that she was wasting her time. She sought out alternative approaches, researchers, and doctors who were open minded. For that effort, I’m eternally grateful. I sometimes cringe realizing that there are others like me who didn’t have parents with the means to seek alternatives or an unwavering voice to challenge an ideologically challenged professional.

Everybody is different. Some of are more different than others. I was born with several “issues” or “handicaps” that significantly stunted my growth into this social society. Among my many problems were a severe speech impediment caused by having too small of a mouth along with eyes that showed signs of amblyopia or strabismus. To top it off, I had astigmatism in my right eye. Sounds like a lot of stuff doesn’t it?

The myriad of issues I confronted led the local public school system to suggest alternatives for my mother as they didn’t believe I would be successful there. I was assigned labels and tags mainly due to my inability to effectively communicate in the way educators and professionals wanted me to. After visiting several schools suggested to her, she began seeking alternatives when she realized none of them would truly help me. She felt as if they were just casting me aside because they were unsure how to teach or help me succeed. I was ultimately held back in a private kindergarten class before being enrolled into a private school in Vestavia Hills.

The speech impediment kept me from communicating with most everyone until I was almost six years old. No one could really understand me except my mother. Through some painful mouth widening processes, experimental therapies, and speech therapies I was able to overcome most of my speech related issues before my ninth birthday. I still have trouble with a few things, but for the most part my speech was corrected.

During this same time, I had a total of three eye surgeries trying to correct the amblyopia/strabismus issues. The first one was on the right eye. The second one was on the left eye. The third surgery was on both of them. All three surgeries worked on muscles in my eye related to controlling motion. As you can guess, none of them were successful.

The issue behind my eyes boils down to this… I live in a 3D world, but I perceive it in 2D. My eyes failure to work together severely restricts my ability to perceive depth. This is not to say I don’t see “depth.” I just imagine from my understanding that it is not the same thing you see. This is because I don’t use both eyes together. I see the same picture twice. However, I’ve learned to select using one eye and turn off the other. Some people are born with this ability. I had to learn it. The whole process of doing this with my brain has gotten easier, but is still very taxing on the brain. I consciously have to choose all the time.

The goals of all of these surgeries were to put my eyes in a position to work together where “fusion” of the images in both eyes is possible. 98% of people who read this never have had a problem with this process and have always perceived the world as a unified field. For almost all of you who are reading this, it is an involuntary process and you’ve done it since the day you were born.

When surgery did not lead to positive results, my mother sought out alternatives. When I was eleven years old, I had progressed enough and I was moved to public school. At the same time I started eye therapy with a behavioral optometrist. What I really remember about therapy is the taxing amount of energy that I expended every Tuesday and Friday afternoon trying to do what my previous surgeon termed as “impossible.” The headaches I used to get after most sessions were downright debilitating. Some progress was made and I learned things that I use to this very day to help me function a lot easier.

Over the next five years things remained pretty stagnant. I just tried to fit in and be a normal teenager. Then in March of 1997, I split my forehead wide open (and likely suffered a concussion) while at a party at a friend’s house. I didn’t realize it at the time until I looked back at it many years later, but it was like someone slowly turned on the lights. It was as if some things in my head were “knocked straight.” It gave me hope that maybe there was light at the end of the tunnel of all this. My eyes, memory, scholastic achievement, and general self-perception improved as I entered my senior year in high school.

Over the next several years, I experienced a great deal of success in college inside and outside of the classroom culminating with an internship with Colin Powell’s America’s Promise in Washington, D.C. However, that same summer I started having issues with my eyes again. The headaches started coming back and I felt like I was losing control. This would be the last time I would read a book cover to cover. When I got back to Birmingham, we once again sought out medical advice hoping that new procedures had been developed. Ultimately, I would have my fourth surgery with the same surgeon in February, 2001. I’m still not sure what it really accomplished except maybe give me some piece of mind and some cosmetic improvements.

The headaches did go away, but at the cost of being able to read for no more than several minutes. I kept quiet about this to almost everybody. I managed to get through the rest of college and graduate school by simply going to class and practicing the lost art of listening (I know some of you find that hard to believe). I was very fortunate to have professors at Montevallo that taught and tested from their notes and lectures and not from the book. My undergraduate programs were so thorough that most of what I encountered in graduate school was nothing more than a refresher course.

Ultimately, I passed on my dream of pursuing any further education when I accepted the reality that in any doctorate or law program I would be required to undertake significant amounts of reading. The effort to even read more than a few pages brought on headaches similar to a migraine. Life went on and I had begun to slowly accept that things were just going to be what they were going to be.

Every time I went to the optometrist he would talk to me about new surgeries and techniques they were working on to help people like me. Finally, in the Spring of ’09, he referred me to a surgeon he thought might be able to offer me something new. Dr. Ludwig was a bit different than the various other surgeons I had encountered. Almost immediately after beginning my exam she was able to identify my previous surgeon by his work. We scheduled for surgery several months out so that she could be able to get complete records on previous surgeries. Unfortunately, she was only able to get partial records.

In November of ’09 I had surgery number five on both eyes involving work on six different muscles. For the most part, I count this surgery as a success. Recovery took longer this time than previous surgeries and also adversely affected my long term memory for several months (but that’s a whole other story). When I fully recovered, my eyes were closer to looking normal and tracking together than ever before, but the double vision still existed. Several times since then, my eyes have appeared to “fuse” and the world has “exploded” outward for me just for a few seconds. The “impossible” all of a sudden didn’t seem to “impossible.”

This past summer I met with the doctor again. She recommended a very minor procedure on my left eye to hopefully help better align the muscles so that fusion might be possible. Our hope was that this would be the last eye surgery. In August of this year, I underwent operation number six on my left eye.

I knew less than three weeks after surgery that we had not achieved the goal we were trying to achieve. The doctor confirmed it when I met with her September and wanted to give my eye several months to properly heal before operating on it again. Surgery was set for December 27th … which is today. When I visited her again in November, the muscle position had moved more than she expected them to making the procedure she recommended to me in September unlikely. She measured my eye movements and position for at least three different types of procedures that are all more invasive than previous one. She won’t know exactly which one until she is able to examine the muscles up close.

The goal remains the same: fused vision or “normal vision.” There is a very likely possibility that I will undergo operation number eight sometime this next year, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this it. There are no guarantees.

I wrote all this so that you would be able to understand that the issues I face with my eyes are much larger than a cosmetic one and understand in part of why I am the way I am. For the most part, my eyes are straight now except when I’m tired or strained. Most of you who read this have never known them to be any other way. Some of you have seen it since the beginning or very early on. I hope I’ve been able to explain that it is much more than a cosmetic thing… It is how I perceive the world. I’m tired of the headaches and the energy drain it takes just to use my eyes. I’m ready to complete this chapter in my life. However, as long as there is a chance that I can see it without having to think about it, I’ll keep chasing it. Hope is an idea or belief that can feed a starving man for years on end, but it will never satisfy his appetite… I’m hoping to be full sometime soon.