11:53pm November 23, 2011

Rambling about vision

Really wish I could convey to people what my vision is like.

The best I ever did was spend all day taking photos of my kitchen and editing them all together into the mishmash of shapes I normally see. I don’t even remember which computer last had that file.

But that was static. I have no animation skill. And if I did animate it it would probably give people migraines and seizures so I shouldn’t do that anyway.

Would explain why migraines are so fucking constant though. I’m just glad I can sort of tolerate my iPod on lowest light right now. So glad I have it, I can’t always tolerate it but it’s better than my computer. Still getting a migraine though. But better than when I had the lamp on.

Anyway… what just happened may illustrate it some.

Was in the bathroom using my iPod and every now and then I’d see a red stripe somewhere on what looked like my hand. I kept looking at my hands. Which of course I could only see pieces of. And I searched them a whole bunch of times before I found it on my finger. And it was bright and long – from touching a bleeding lip. So should have been visible the first twenty times I checked that finger.

Then came in here and saw orange things dancing around. Eventually figured out they were the telephone buttons “moving” as my eyes and head moved.

This is why I’ve been in cars. Many times. Looking straight ahead. They slam on the brakes. I don’t know why. “Didn’t you see that guy who cut us off?” “No.”

Moving. Cars. Can. Disappear.

This isn’t just when I have migraines. But it sure gives me migraines.

A year or two ago a person led me to someone’s house.

The next day I finally worked out she’d led me through the middle of the street. And led me further staying in the street. For blocks.

Yeah I can’t always tell if I’m in the street or not either.

It’s a combination of several problems. One is stuff actually looking like it’s in pieces that move and flash and stuff. Another is having possibly-ocular-migraine-stuff going on where shimmering things appear in the air and move around and obscure stuff in a semi-random way. And another is not processing what I do see very well (like seeing just the shapes and colors and textures and not getting where objects stop or what they are without work).

I need my tinted glasses back. Sometimes I need things to be this way. Because my body is adapted to it, and changing it changed things I don’t want changed. Other times I need the glasses because they force some kind of order on the visual world and reduce migraines.

And right now migraines are out of control and just keep happening every day.

I can live with that but I’d rather not if I could change it in some way.

Of course I’ve gotten checked by eye doctors a lot. Since I was little actually cause it was obvious even then something was up. (When they found I had better than normal acuity and no obvious problems in the eye they stopped there.)

And the parts of this that aren’t a muscular problem must be a brain problem because my eyes don’t show any obvious reasons for most of this. But certain colors of glasses are like magic. I know that’s not the technical term but that’s how it feels to have the world pop into view instantly and most or all of the brain-hurtage to stop. Other colors are magic in an awful way of course and make things worse. I wish there was real science showing how that all worked so it could be covered by insurance… but then here insurance doesn’t cover any glasses at all so tough luck I guess.

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