I don't believe that there has ever been a time in my life where my eyesight was 20/20 without glasses. Though I wasn't one of those kids who had glasses from toddlerhood, I don't ever remember a time where the candle flame on our church alter didn't look like stars.
And to me, that was fitting, it was church after all. The star flames were special, magical. I thought everyone else saw them the way I did.
My nearsightedness wasn't too bad, I could see the blackboard in kindergarten and in 1st through 2nd grade. My lack of success in early elementary wasn't do to my eye sight, but to dyslexia.
In third grade, however, my eyesight had tipped enough to need glasses.
There were clues that in hindsight did signal something was wrong. I sat very close to the tv, always inching my way back up to the tv after being picked up and moved back. I could read at 3 years of age, and always held the book too close. And then there were the lights.
My parents were raised during the great depression, my mother is a farmer's daughter, the thought of turning on an electric light inside while day light was streaming through the windows was an abhorrent concept to them. It was unnecessary. Why pay for light, that is unneeded, and that is being naturally provided for FREE? Their argument was helped greatly by the fact that we lived in Denver, CO where the sun shines 350 days out of the year.
I could never explain why I needed a light on. But day light was never quite right, I needed to add something to it to "take the edge off."
I got my very first pair of eye glasses in 1969 when I was 8. They were brown and the "cat eye" frame that was so popular back then. I got them because that was the frame my cousin had and I wanted to be like her. Except her's were blue and I was told that blue wouldn't go well with my coloring, so mine were brown.
I remember wearing them the next day to school and the response I received as I walked in to class at the back of the room after hanging up my coat. My teacher Mrs. Stevens looked at me, smiled and announced her joy at seeing my now bespectacled face. "I knew that's what you needed!" she exclaimed.
She wasn't being malicious. I did have problems at that school. However eyes glasses don't cure dyslexia. So other than being able to see the chalk board better, my issues really didn't improve. And frankly I didn't need her announcing my decent into another level of "pick on kid" hell. Along with everything else , I was now "four eyes."
My love affair with the cat eye frame glasses didn't last. Sometime during the fourth grade I grew to detest them. I wanted wire frame "John Denver" glasses , but was told no, I had to live with these for a while. During summer vacation I lost them . . . accidentally . . . . . . . . on purpose.
When school began the next year I not only started at a new school but also in new set of glasses, in a frame style I would wear for 5 years. I got the wire frame "John Denver" (granny) glasses.
Throughout my teen years I allowed myself two vanities, my blond hair and my hazel eyes. I have always been told how pretty my eyes were/are. They have a deep bluish brown ring at the edge of the iris and sclara. Inside the iris there is something like a sunburst away from the pupil in colors of green, blue, brown, and yellow. For added drama I would always add "with gold flecks" in the description too. I'm not sure if there is or ever were "gold flecks," but it sounded beautiful and mysterious.
Making something a vanity, even a small one has the benefit of making sure you take care of it and I made sure I saw the eye doctor regularly. At every visit there was a new prescription. Those pretty eyes were increasingly hidden by a stronger and stronger prescription. My eye's didn't really stabilize until adulthood, and then only for a while.
The only other big change happened in my last year of Junior High (9th grade) when I traded my wire frames in for the big lense plastic frame eye glasses (a style I still wear). I also upgraded to the then "new" technology of photochromatic lenses. Despite what Wikipedia says, these lenses were available to the general public by 1976 ( my cousin had the first pair we had ever seen). I had my first pair by 1978 as it was now obvious that I had extreme light sensitivity (sneezing when I stepped into sunlight after being inside) due to my allergies.
Then about 1997 I was taking my daughter over to her friend's house and I misjudged how far away an oncoming car was on the street we were turning into. Thankfully the other car stopped just in time and didn't hit us. After making sure my daughter was okay, and talking to the police officer who witnessed the whole thing (He gave me a warning), I sat in the car trembling realizing that I had didn't have any depth perception.
An out of the annual trip to the eye doctor revealed that I had developed astigmatism in my right eye. Astigmatism is caused by the irregular shape of the cornea or lens which transmits more than one image to the back of the eye (retina). This double (or more) image makes it hard to focus.
But not to worry, a new prescription that included bifocals and all would be fine. I sat alone in my chair once home and tried to come to terms with being 35 and needing "old people" glasses. I got "no-line" which helped my self esteem.
Astigmatism can be the contributing factor in automobile accidents. In 1990 Lee Olson, a friend of mine with astigmatism, was killed when he misjudged the distance between where he was and the end of the alley way. Thinking he had a lot more alley left he blasted out of it at full speed and into an on coming car.
This picture of me and Lee was taken in 1978, just after our jr high production of "Oliver!." We were Mr. and Mrs. Bumble (a.k.a Widow Corney), the owners of the workhouse. - this isn't our production, but I still remember doing these lines with him) I am wearing the photochromatic lenses I spoke about above.
Since the diagnosis of astigmatism I think about Lee, often.
Three years later it became apparent that the astigmatism was much worse and I gave up driving at night, unless it's a highway, or I know the area. I went back to the doctor and the news was devastating, there was nothing more they could do for my right eye. No correction was possible.
Once again I came home and sat in my chair and quietly came to terms with the fact that I was now functionally blind in my right eye.
I was told to protect my left eye at all costs as it was doing all the "lifting."
Life went on, as life with 4 kids, a husband and 3 cats is wont to do. The fall of 2003 was my eldest son's 17th birthday and he wanted a paintball party and a sleep over.
Paintballing with us was/is fine as long as all protective gear is worn and his party was scheduled to be at a regulated and monitored in-door field. Everything on Saturday was fine and the boys all came home, watched movies and some even slept that night.
The next morning they all wanted to go into the woods behind our house and shoot the trees. I was against this because not all the boys had safety equipment (they had rented it at the field). But I was assured that they wouldn't goof around they'd only shoot trees. A half an hour later his friend came running into the house, my son had been shot in the eye with a paintball. He had been trying to take the paintbaill marker (a gun, but they call it a "marker" now) away from a boy who was goofing around with it.
The party ended right then and there, my husband got the boys home and I took my son to the ER. At our little town hospital they ordered an ambulance to take him up to The Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, and we began the process of saving his eye (we did) through outpatient care (which wasn't easy because he wouldn't lie down and wouldn't follow the doctor's orders. They were to NOT DO ANYTHING.)
During one of the many outpatient visits, his doctor looked at me and said "Do you know your eyes are different colors?" I sputtered and said "No." He told me to go make and appointment on the second floor (the clincs area). I did and began my having appointments right along side my son.
After all the tests were done there was a new diagnosis for my right eye. Keratoconus (carrot- a - cone - us)
Keratoconus is degeneration of the structure of the cornea. The cornea is the clear tissue covering the front of the eye.
The shape of the cornea slowly changes from the normal round shape to a cone shape.
- National Center for Biotechnology Information, U.S. National Library of Medicine
~ and ~
Keratoconus, often abbreviated to "KC", is a non-inflammatory eye condition in which the normally round dome-shaped cornea progressively thins causing a cone-like bulge to develop. This results in significant visual impairment.
- National Keratoconus Foundation (image from NKF)

In other words my right eye is shaped like a snow cone.
The doctor at ME&E asked if I had ever heard any of my other eye doctors use the word "Keratoconus?" I said, "no." I had honestly never heard the word before, which is interesting because it is estimated that 1 in every 2,000 people have Keratoconus in one or both eyes.
Most Keratoconus is diagnosed when people are in their teens and early twenties. It's rather unusual that I wasn't diagnosed until I was 41.
Image from Wkikpedia
If you want to see what a Keratoconus eye looks like in real life, click here.
In its earliest stages, keratoconus causes slight blurring and distortion of vision and increased sensitivity to light. These symptoms usually first appear in the late teens and early twenties. Keratoconus may progress for 10-20 years and then slow or stabilize. Each eye may be affected differently.
- National Keratoconus Foundation
The cause is unknown, but the tendency to develop keratoconus is probably present from birth. Keratoconus is thought to involve a defect in collagen, the tissue that makes up most of the cornea.
Some researchers believe that allergy and eye rubbing may play a role.
[snip]
Most people who develop keratoconus start out nearsighted. The nearsightedness tends to become worse over time.
- National Center for Biotechnology Information, U.S. National Library of Medicine
People with early keratoconus typically notice a minor blurring of their vision and come to their clinician seeking corrective lenses for reading or driving.[2][3] At early stages, the symptoms of keratoconus may be no different from those of any other refractive defect of the eye. As the disease progresses, vision deteriorates, sometimes rapidly. Visual acuity becomes impaired at all distances, and night vision is often quite poor. Some individuals have vision in one eye that is markedly worse than that in the other eye. The disease is often bilateral, though asymmetrical in many patients. Some develop photophobia (sensitivity to bright light), eye strain from squinting in order to read, or itching in the eye,[2] but there is normally little or no sensation of pain.
The classic symptom of keratoconus is the perception of multiple 'ghost' images, known as monocular polyopia. This effect is most clearly seen with a high contrast field, such as a point of light on a dark background. Instead of seeing just one point, a person with keratoconus sees many images of the point, spread out in a chaotic pattern. This pattern does not typically change from day to day, but over time it often takes on new forms. Patients also commonly notice streaking and flaring distortion around light sources. Some even notice the images moving relative to one another in time with their heart beat.
- Wikipedia
This explains a lot of the problems I have had with my sight growing up and even now. I am sensitive to light and have a near manic obsession with light levels in this house. I will not allow anything to be either too bright for me or too dark. Consequently the tv is never on without lights on in the room, and the same goes for the computer. Fluorescent lighting almost always is "rounded" with an incandescent bulb so that I can read. See kids! Mom is not nuts! (well maybe I am, but they don't need to know that).
I can, interestingly enough, go to the movies, but I cannot read a black screen with white letters.
What appears to everyone else as this:

appears to me as this:

This happens to me at museum and zoo exhibits too.
Thankfully I can stop the conflicting input by closing or covering my right eye, and get back to what everyone else is seeing.
Closing my right eye has become an automatic process for me. Often in the morning as I am taking my son to school and need to turn or look into the sun I will unconsciously close my right eye and look as if I am in a permanent wink.
Those who have Keratoconus in both eyes aren't so lucky. They have no "go to" eye.
Currently no one knows exactly what causes Keratoconus , whether it's genetic, allergies, oxidative stress, eye rubbing or hormonal. Or a combination of a few or all of these issues.
There are treatments, and a few doctors who claim to have a cure. The treatments recognized by the NKF are:
- Eyeglasses or soft contact lenses
"may be used to correct the mild nearsightedness and astigmatism caused by keratoconus in its earliest stage, however at some point a Rigid Gas Permeable (RGP) contact lens will correct KC vision better."
- Rigid Gas Permeable contact lenses (RPG Lenses)
"will correct vision as KC progresses. The rigid lens material enables the lens to vault over the cornea, replacing the cornea's irregular shape with a smooth, uniform refracting surface to improve vision."
- Intacs plastic rings
inserted into the mid layer of the cornea to flatten it, changing the shape and location of the cone.
- Corneal Crosslinking (CXL)
a new treatment option in FDA clinical trials in the USA. The goal of this procedure is to is to stop progression of the keratoconus.
- Corneal Transplant Surgery
is necessary in very advanced keratoconus due to scarring, extreme thinning or contact lens intolerance. (video of an actual cornea transplant)
So far my doctors are content to let me stay with my glasses, even though the last attempt to give me some usable sight in my right eye, trifocals (no line, thank you very much) , lasted only a year. My keratoconus is still progressing. (maybe because I was a late bloomer) There was some talk years ago about contacts. It is now thought that I wouldn't tolerate that well. My doctor and I have recently discussed Intacs, but I am turning into a big chicken when it is coming to eye surgery.
One of the results of my son's eye injury was that he developed a cataract (the lens went cloudy) . He had to have surgery to replace it with an artifical lens. I was there for all of that, and now, well I think I might grow feathers before I go for eye surgery.
While there are several pages on the web that scream out that you cannot go blind with keratoconus, none say if that is with or with out treatment. Others allude to a small percentage 15-20% needing a corneal transplant because their own corneas have become too thin or too scarred.
And I, maybe foolishly, ask, "If that small percentage couldn't go blind why risk the surgery? "
But we'll see
get it, gawd I'm punny.
So what does this have to do with the flour in my title?
It has to do with what brought me to signing up and writing this diary.
Every Thanksgiving I go all out. It is the only holiday my whole family, no matter what religion they are, celebrate together. So I was in the kitchen making this, stirring that, and doing the other thing, and I may have gotten a little over exuberant with the flour, for it was all over the place.
The next morning I woke up and my left eye hurt terribly and I couldn't see. My husband took me to our primary care physician (because it was the Friday after Thanksgiving, eye doctors were no en cassa). He looked at my eye, took out the black light and did all he could, eventually saying that since I relied on my left eye, we couldn't take the chance that this was nothing. I was to go to Mass Eye and Ear immediately.
So that's where we went, and along the way, with my eyes closed during the journey I thought about going blind. What it would be like, what I would miss, what I could no longer do.
Hours after arriving at ME&E and waiting, and waiting and waiting (because everyone else had been referred there too that day), my left eye was given a clean bill of health.
But when I came home I searched out Nurse Kelley and volunteered to tell you about my snow cone eye.