A New (Half-Blind) Beginning

Once upon a time there was a freak who fancied himself a writer because he didn't know what else to be.  He released a few e-books, a print edition that found a home on a library shelf, and he blogged.

The freak blogged his brains out with fiction, non-fiction, so-called poetry, and other random, and sometimes themed, mad ramblings.  He was rolling right along, mostly pleased with the words he inflicted upon the world, until his own world ended.

Physical betrayal behind eyes the color of dung thrusted the freak into the emotional chaos of vision loss.  He didn't know the cause as his world grew hazy and dark, numbing him into denial until it terrified him into action.

What he hoped would be a simple visit to the optometrist turned into a trip to the E.R., which sent him to an out-of-town E.R., and eventually a neuro-optimologist.  After various medical and visual tests, not to mention the 11 tubes of blood taken for extra torture, the freak was given the name for the nightmare he was experiencing.

Ischemic Optic Neuropathy, which is a loss of blood flow event.  Basically his left eye had a stroke, leaving him with less than perfect peripheral vision.  This loss revealed old, unspecified damage in his right eye, leaving him some sight, but also with a grey, hazy blob where people's faces used to be seen.  This unspecified damage was given the name  Optic Atrophy, which is a thinning of the optic nerves from whatever happened to that eye. 

The freak quickly learned there was nothing to be done to bring back what he lost.  Untreatable became the half-watch word, and he didn't know what to do.  Fall into despair?  Yes.  Rage with anger?  Yes.  Find a way to teach an old freak new tricks in order to keep doing the things he loves.  Yes, but it would not be easy, but most good things are not.

So, here I am, months later, mostly the same, yet irreversibly different.  I am officially visually impaired, but after hitting my face on a table when bending over to pick something up off the floor and on many occasions nearly colliding with fellow pedestrians, I don't feel that's a strong enough description for what I can't see.  This is why this freak calls himself illegally blind or half-blind.  (For more about what I can and can't see, please see the video below, thank you.  I'm getting tired of typing this post.)

Does this new beginning end my vlog TheFreakOptic Files?  No.  I am enjoying the creative urges it inspires and the challenges it provides way too much to abandon it.  Does this post mean I'll be blogging like old times?  Probably not.  I can't make any promises.  All I know is I felt, while sitting on a public toilet, that I needed this writing challenge.

Maybe there will be more tales, or maybe not.  Either way...

Thank you for reading, or listening if you are a half-blind freak like me.  ;)

Freak Out, 

JLH

P.S.

The FreakOptic Files

http://freakoptics.blogspot.com/

P.P.S.

My Mad Scientist Glasses