Day by Day...

The hour is late and I cannot fall asleep.  Outside my house there is an angry, raging storm.  Every now and then there is a rumble, followed by a boom of thunder, and a flash of lightenening.  Of course, I am old enough now to not be scared of storms, but the constant flashes of lighting prevent me from falling asleep.

Maybe I should tell my friends a story, until the tempest is swept away?

My age was eight when I discovered the birth defect.  Peering into the bathroom mirror, I could detect the key hole-shaped retina of my left eye, the unusually large region of that area, and the fuzziness in my vision.  Ever since I was a toddler, I could remember that something was not quite right.  There were frequent visits to the optometrist, where I would have to sit for what seemed like hours, keeping my eyes opened wide beneath bright blaring lights.  I had had two eye surgeries, this I knew, but it never registered to me, even when my hospital bed had been wheeled into the operating room, that it all was because of my left eye was different.

 “Coloboma” is a word that defines the keyhole-like shaped retina of the eye. Only in ten-hundred thousand babies born this year, will be born be nine children who will have birth defect.  Seven out of those children are born stone blind, but I am not.  It is a miracle. My parents diagnosed  the coloboma early on.  They were terribly upset when their doctor told them that the sign of the coloboma meant the possibility of another birth defect, probably internally inside of me.  Automatically, everyone figured that either my heart was damaged, or my kidneys, or my brain.  It was frightening, particularly for my mother, who feared that I would literally stop breathing one day.

To this day, my mom talks about how upset that doctor made her. His predictions of an other birth defect were totally false, which eventually was confirmed for my parents by another physician.  I learned how to crawl, walk, and talk without any difficulty and I grew up healthy and strong.  Only my vision remained a mess.

As I was so little, I didn't understand that my eyes needed help.  It was all very confusing to me. I received my first pair of glasses when I was a toddler!  Hardly three years old, I was given the most adorable set of spectacles that you ever did see.  They were a sweet lilac purple, trimmed with gold, and Mickey Mouse ears sticking up on the edge of the rims.  With the glasses came the eye patches.  Doctors felt that the only way to improve my vision would be for me to wear an eye patch over my right eye (the one that had strong vision) in order to force my weak left eye to work.  The method was successful to an extent.  After a time my vision began to improve considerably, although I hated wearing the eye patch.  Every day, when it came time to wear the thing, I would run and hide under the grand piano in the living room, hoping that mom wouldn't find me.  Of course she found me every time and made me wear the patch.  It was for my own good, but to a stubborn kid--as I was--it was horrible.

Due to poor eyesight, I struggled to see all the way through my elementary school years.  Day by day I struggled. Eventually, the eye patching went away, after it was perceived that my eyes were as improved as they ever were going to be.  By this point, I had picked up on the fact that there was really something wrong with me.  My parents had been very good about all this.  From the time I was tiny, I remember them saying to me, “Emily, your eyes are special.”  My dad in particular, I can now recall, would hold me in his lap and repeat over and over to me, “You are special.”

I remember the exact day, the exact time, the exact moment I truly noticed the coloboma.  It was an awakening moment.  Honestly, I can say that I became rather stunned.  At eight years old, I realized that for the rest of my life my vision would be terrible.  The truth struck me like a thunderbolt.

Two eye surgeries (one performed by one of the greatest optical surgeons world-wide) gave me the ability to be able to focus my eyes better.  One day, I found that I could read words from a long distance.  The thrill, of not getting a headache from reading, overjoyed me.

My eyes give me trouble to this day.  Looking in the mirror, I have accepted to coloboma--the birth defect--as a part of who I am.  I no longer feel sad or depressed about my vision, although at times it is difficult to cope with. Why I had to go through years of struggling, is something that I don’t fully understand, but I'm okay with it.  Maybe, I was blessed with a coloboma so that I would have a heart of compassion toward others who have disabilities?  One thing I definitely know, is that my struggles have given me an urge to work hard at everything that is laid before me.  I hope that urge will help me in the future.

Outside, the thunder has stopped.   My eyes are starting to feel a bit droopy and my head is close to nodding.  I think that I will go to bed now and try not to think of how tired I’m going to be tomorrow.  Oh well. I can only take each day at a time, that is something my life has taught me.  If I can just get through my life one day at a time, in the end, I think that everything will turn out alright.