Doctor, My Eyes

I’m a bit freaked out about my eyes these days. Not too long ago I went back to progressive lenses in my glasses. I had tried them years ago and finding the sweet spot where I could see left me circling my head around so much that it made me dizzy. I returned to good old-fashioned bifocals. Then this spring, when I was ordering new glasses, I was encouraged to give progressives another shot as they have improved over the last 20 years. With the promise of a money-back guarantee, I had nothing to lose, and much to my delight, they were great.

I enjoyed my new glasses for a couple of weeks and then, quite abruptly, I was having difficulty seeing. It felt like I was wearing someone else’s prescription. The clarity was gone and everything was slightly distorted. Of course, this was affecting my balance and I was getting horrific headaches. Reading a book, one of my great pleasures in life, suddenly became maddening for me.

After a few weeks of this, I finally went to the optometrist. The evening before my appointment I covered one eye and then the other and realized that I have a large spot on my right eye that was messing with me. Of course, that sent me to the internet and I had to read all the reasons why I had this crazy spot. None of them were good, but the good thing is that it turned out to be none of them.

My optometrist is a smart guy. He knew immediately what it was. By the time I saw him, it was into the evening hours, but he had the cell phone number for a retina doc and called him immediately. Suddenly, this puzzling vision problem I had been walking around with for weeks had become an emergency. The diagnosis: ocular histoplasmosis.

I first heard of histoplasmosis after I moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, and had an eye exam. As the optometrist looked into my dilated eyes, he asked, “Did you grow up in the Cincinnati area?” What?! Why would he ask that? Well, he went to optometry school at the University of Dayton and saw a lot of people who had these weird little scars in their eyeballs that were caused by a childhood disease called histoplasmosis. I had never heard of it, but apparently, it’s a disease I had when I was a kid. And virtually every kid who grew up in the region of the country where I did, had it, too.

It’s an illness that presents itself a lot like the flu, so when you have it, people don’t realize it’s anything other than the flu. It’s caused by airborne fungal spores that come from bat and bird droppings. Yeah, you read that right. Weird, huh? Some people call it “Spelunkers Disease” because if you spend time in caves, you get it from the bats. Basically, though, it’s in the dirt and air, so you can’t do much to protect yourself. 

I can’t tell you why the place where I grew up is the epicenter, but it is. If I hadn’t had these little scars in my eyeballs that were discovered after I moved to Charlotte, I never would have known about it. Not once had I heard the word histoplasmosis while I lived in Ohio. Denial? Ignorance? Conspiracy? Dunno. But strange.

It’s primarily a lung disease, and I learned from x-rays that I have scars there, too. Other people who had the disease as a child have spots on their lungs as well, but not everybody. And the disease can also move to your eyes, although not with everyone, and we all don’t have the scars to prove it. I have scars in both places. Lucky me.  

When I first learned of these scars on my eyeballs, I was relieved to know that I was, in fact, quite lucky, because they weren’t located where they would affect my vision. Whew! There was a large scar on my right eye that just cleared my retina, so I had narrowly escaped partial blindness.

As it turns out, I had 60+ years of luck with that eye. For some reason, that histo scar has been activated or some vessels around it have burst, or something like that. Anyway, there is a bunch of mushy stuff around it and under it and that’s what’s causing the spot.

The day I learned about all this, complete with photos and more information than I could absorb, is the same day I had the first shot in my eyeball. It’s the same sort of treatment that people with macular degeneration receive, and it’s not nearly as awful as it sounds. But I do have to say that, when I signed a consent form giving someone permission to stick a needle in my eye, it was surreal. Never in my life had I ever imagined such a moment. Now it will become a regular part of my life, at least for years, maybe for the rest of my life.

My prognosis is good, the doctor says. There is a 90% chance they will be able to keep the spot from getting any worse. So, hopefully I won’t lose the vision in my right eye completely. But seeing is such a struggle for me that I can’t imagine going through the rest of my life like this. The spot will never go away and there is a good chance it won’t get better. I’m trying to accept that and consider it progress that I have finally stopped shouting “Out, damn spot! Out I say!” like Lady Macbeth every time I wake up in the morning and open my eyes. In time, I will adjust to my new normal.

It’s been exactly a week since I had my first needle in the eye. I know there are far worse things, and I’m thankful that I was able to see as well as I did for as long as I did, almost 67 years. But the one thing I keep thinking about is how I wish I could have one more day without this freakin’ spot. I didn’t know my last day to see clearly was my last day. If I had, I would have paid more attention to the sunset, the flowers in my garden, the faces of the people I love...