The Vision Thing

I have been a voracious reader since childhood, and it was while I was still a child that I read Ursula Le Guin's novel A Wizard of Earthsea. The first installment of the now acclaimed Earthsea Cycle, this novel tells the story of a young wizard called Ged, who, because of pride and ignorance, lets loose a great evil in the world of Earthsea. The book is taken up with Ged's quest to track down the evil he has loosed upon the world; and, at one point, he is shipwrecked upon a lonely island and taken in by some poor fisherfolk.

It is at this point that one of the most memorable passages in Le Guin's novel occurs. Ged is given a boat by an old fisherman in order to continue his quest; and the passage that follows has remained with me ever since:

Unlike the shrewd fishermen of Gont, this old man, for fear and wonder of his wizardry, would have given the boat to Ged. But Ged paid him for it in sorcerer's kind, healing his eyes of the cataracts that were in the way of blinding him. The old man, rejoicing, said to him, "We called the boat Sanderling, but do you call her Lookfar, and paint eyes aside her prow, and my thanks will look out from that blind wood for you and keep you from rock and reef. For I had forgotten how much light there is in the world until you gave it back to me."

The reason this passage stuck with me was quite simple: as a child who suffered from severe myopia in both eyes, and who as a consequence was already wearing very thick spectacles (and which would only become thicker over time), I understood all too well the desire for unclouded vision. Laser surgery had yet to be invented (and would, in any event, prove to be inappropriate for my particular condition), nor had I reached an age where contact lenses could be utilised; so I had simply resigned myself to never being able to see except through the distorting lens of spectacles. Thus it was that I appreciated what the old man in the novel meant when he said he had forgotten how much light there was in the world; only, in my case, I had never really known.

As I grew older, I was eventually liberated from the burden of thick spectacles by contact lenses. First, soft lenses, and then hard lenses. Nor do I use the words "liberated" and "burden" lightly or melodramatically. Unless you have worn really thick spectacles (and I mean spectacles whose lens thickness is measured in inches) you cannot really appreciate what a "glass darkly" they are. For starters, with spectacles, the point of focus is in front of the eye, which means everything appears much smaller or more distant than is actually the case. Also, and especially with thick lenses that require thick frames, peripheral vision is virtually non-existent; wearing spectacles is like wearing a vision straight-jacket, limiting what you can see to a narrow field to your immediate front. Finally, thick spectacles are extremely uncomfortable: in Summer they are hot and heavy; in Winter, they are constantly obscured by rain and fog.

Not that I necessarily felt sorry for myself; I always counted myself more fortunate than the blind or the near-blind for whom no amount of corrective devices proved effective. In so doing, I concede that I was ignorant of the rich lives lead by those over whom I considered myself more fortunate; nor do I deny that my sentiment was occasionally a salve to damaged pride in the wake of the inevitable childhood bullying or adolescent angst. But in general, my feeling was not so much one of self-pity as sheer frustration. I felt trapped in a kind of netherworld, in which I could imperfectly glimpse the possibilities of undiminished vision, but from whose promise I was permanently alienated.

In time, of course, I came to terms with my condition. My vision gradually stabilised (in relative terms), I was able to access the freedom of contact lenses, and I was not prevented in any way from indulging in my love of literature and writing. But I never forgot that particular passage from A Wizard of Earthsea, either; it was at once both consolation and reminder, a kind of bitter-sweet meditation of the Weltschmerz of being.

And so it was that I recently sat in the consulting room of a retinal specialist, considering Le Guin's novel and the reaction of the old man. I had just been informed that I had suffered a detached retina in my left eye, and that it would require surgery to correct. And the sooner the better; indeed, if it was left too late, or not treated at all, the result could be total vision loss in the left eye. How had this happened? As I understood the explanation, it went something like this: as we age, the fluid in our eyes changes, becoming denser and harder. This usually starts in early to mid thirties, and usually has no adverse effects. In my case, however, because my retina was so weak, the change in the eye fluid had caused a tear in the retina, into which fluid had leaked. This fluid had eventually resulted in the retina becoming detached from the eye.

Shortly thereafter, I went under the knife (so to speak) at the Royal Eye and Ear Hospital in Melbourne. The procedure employed was that the fluid would be drained from my eye, a cold laser would be utilised to seal the tear in the retina, and a gas bubble would be dropped in the eye to press the retina back into place. It was a day procedure only, with an overnight stay for observation purposes. I was told it would be done under a local anesthetic, but as it transpired, they put me out completely. Coming out of general anesthetic was quite unpleasant; aside from general grogginess, there was a foul taste in the pit of my stomach. But aside from that, there was no pain; a slight headache, which pain-killers dealt with; a scratching sensation in the left eye which went away after 24 hours; a bruised feeling in the socket, which persisted for a week or so; and a bloodshot eye which gradually diminished. My eye was also puffy and black, like someone had smacked me in the face with a 4x2; but I suppose you can't have surgery and come out of it looking like a fashion model!

And all this just three weeks before my and my Dearly Beloved's wedding! Not that we were stressed (much!). For myself, however, I wasn't so much concerned with the procedure as with what would happen if it were not entirely successful: if there was vision loss, or loss of function in the eye, would that have implications for my hopes to candidating for the ministry? And if so, what else would I do; what calling could I follow, having set myself on the path to that calling which I feel it is my life's purpose to pursue? In the end, I could only shrug my shoulders and allow matters to take their course; there are just some things in life over which we have no control, and about which it is pointless getting upset. Not, I hasten to add, that I was resigned to any sort of fate, nor expecting the worst. Rather, I simply understood that all I could do was place myself in the hands of the surgeons and specialists and let them get on with the job.

Well, it's been two weeks since the procedure, and I am happy to report that, according to my doctors, I am healing nicely. I still can't wear a contact lens in my left eye as the gas bubble still hasn't dissolved fully (I may still be one eyed come wedding time), but at least I can now read and write (unlike the first week and a half, when I could only contemplate the slow passage of time), and I have no troubles getting about (although depth perception is slightly problematic). Also, there should be no problems flying off to NZ for the honeymoon since the gas bubble inserted in my eye should be fully dissolved by then; it looked at one stage as though I would have to have long-acting gas bubbles inserted instead, which would have meant delaying the honeymoon until much later next year.

More importantly, I want to add that I was a public patient. I do not have private health insurance because I cannot, and have never been able to, afford private health insurance, rebates and incentives notwithstanding. Moreover, I have always had a personal view that maintaining a public health system as a primary and not second-rate form of community care is an absolute priority, a matter toward which our tax monies should be focused. The REEH is a public hospital. I was in a public ward. The nurses, despite being obviously hard-pressed by their workload, were attentive and compassionate. The doctors were at once down-to-earth and humorous. I never once felt like a second-rate patient. The REEH was everything a public hospital should be - despite what I am sure were the kinds of shortages in resources and personnel which our user-pays obsessed society has imposed upon the public health system. They were absolutely fantastic, and I have nothing but praise for the entire staff.

It is just a pity that, as a society, we care more about tax-breaks and for the short-termism of immediate gain than we do for the institution of public health willingly funded by the citizenry as a whole.

I am still recovering from the surgery; and although I still don't have access to the full measure of the world's light, thanks to the staff at REEH, I have the same level as I enjoyed before. It is enough.

Talk to you soon,

BB

Quote for the Day: We all know what light is; but it is not easy to tell what it is. (Samuel Johnson)