eyes, and other things i worry about

Lately I have been having some trouble with my eyes. For decades -- more than four of them if you must know -- I was the lone person in my biological family not to wear glasses. Glasses were something, actually, that I kind of coveted, going so far as to try and sport a pair with non-prescription lenses just to rock the look a smidge.

Oh, how I rue my youthful dabbling with eyewear as accessory, thinking they made me look smart or more interesting or whatever silly idea I had in my head.

Because now, when my eyes are bugging me and these words as I type them are blurry and a little swimmy, I really miss my perfect eyes.  Now when I can't read without glasses and keep needing stronger and stronger assistance,

I really miss my perfect eyes.

The optometrist whom I saw on Monday assures me that my eyes are healthy.  She inspected my maculae, my optic nerves, performed her bit of wizardry with a bright light in a dark room and looked into each cornea. She says the peepers are actually in great shape. They're just old and losing some elasticity after 50 years of service.  Can you blame them?

Because my right eye had been strangely weepy for the past few weeks, naturally I had a whole story about macular degeneration going in my head. I have a terror of losing my sight, honestly, something I never considered until it happened to my father, life-long avid reader and user of his eyeballs, who now creeps his way through a book, using a strange magnifying device on the surface of the pages, his cute face close, so close to the print.

And though there is a genetic component, making it possible that macular degeneration is on the short list of fabulous assets I attribute to my progenitor, it isn't something, doctor says, I should worry about.  Not least of which because if it happens, it won't happen for ages AND if it does, there's nothing anyone can do about it. No cure, just tools to perhaps slow it. Like injections in the eye, which my father gets, though it's just damage-control for the already-legally-blind.

The strange weepiness? Mild allergies.  Bonus? Astigmatism, worse on the right than the left. Both new for me.

So that's GOOD NEWS, right? I don't have to worry about macular degeneration. On doctor's orders. I just need to avoid smoking, protect my eyes from the sun, eat dark leafy greens, get check-ups every couple of years. Sound advice.

And wear my old glasses for another couple of weeks while my lenses get an up-do, get replaced with stronger magnification for close-up and now for distance, something I didn't need a year and a half ago.  

AND finally, find something else to worry about, besides the degeneration of my maculae. 

That's the easiest part of all of this, honestly, the finding something else to worry about.  That's one muscle that remains as well-toned at fifty as it ever was at twenty. So now that it can't really be macular degeneration, then I guess I'll just go back to brain tumors and thyroid cancer as my fall-back worries. After all, I do need something to think about when insomnia grabs me in the middle of the night.  And since the eyeballs are fine, tumors and cancer will just have to do.

XX