Let's talk about eyes. Specifically, mine.
I was born with a fairly severe astigmatism. Perhaps connected to my jaundice, though I gather this was more likely to cause brain damage. Yay.
Side note: prenatal jaundice is caused by a waste product called bilirubin that is fat soluble. Since my Mum had psychological problems surrounding her body image and body fat. she ate very little and it stands to reason there was little fat in her body to dissolve the bilirubin. Further reading here.
But back to my eyes. I was apparently offered an operation when I was very young to help correct my eyesight. My parents decided against it, because there was a chance it could go wrong and leave me blind. Ben can simply move closer to the blackboard, they reasoned.
At 15, in the final days before my 16th birthday, I went for a sight test because it was still free. I got some glasses made up and gave them a go. The frames pinched my nose in a way I found tremendously uncomfortable and wearing the lenses gave me my first ever serious migraine. I had to go an lie downfor several hours, the full works.
I'm sad to admit, I gave up with my glasses at this point. I never felt encouraged to learn to drive and because of Mum's own sight problems my parents had picked a house that was basically 30 minutes walk from all the important amenities in Swindon, including the town centre.
So I muddled by through my A-Levels and into adult life. Once I was an independent wage earner, I could see I couldn't really afford to run a car on top of everything else, so it hurtled down my list of priorities and languished there. I knew I couldn't read licence plates at the required distance unaided, but I figured since I rode a mountain bike to and from school almost every day from the age of 11 to 16 - and never had any accidents that could not be attributed to bullying such as branches being shoved through your spokes - surely I would one day be OK to drive? The reading licence plates thing would be easy to sort out one day, but right now it wasn't an issue.
Wind on to 2009 and my Mum died. A suicide attempt combined with her malnourished state from years of under-eating led to a congenital heart failure. Apparently. At one stage, my grief made me decide I had to do EVERYTHING. I got a passport for the first time in 29 years. I booked a sight test, got fresh glasses, a provisional licence and set about learning to drive. In a classic ass-about-face way, I decided to do my theory test without having had any lessons. I was considering an intensive one week Drivers Ed course you see. Anyway, I failed the hazard perception test which meant - despite passing the theory test - I failed overall. And at this stage in my grief, one setback was all it took to deflate the sails. I had so many irons in so many fires in my need to do EVERYTHING that it was simply not sustainable.
I knew my glasses prescription wasn't quite right. The incredible sharp relief between my natural (but far from 20:20) vision and the corrected vision was not as my spectacle wearing friends had described. Things were a little brighter, but far from a revelation in clarity. However, it simply slid back to being something that wan't an issue right now.
Move on to 2011, and my life has become incredibly enriched by one wonderful soul. By her very nature, Sara inspires me to want to do more with my life. Which is impressive considering I fell into the trap of being an intelligent slacker somewhere in the late Nineties and have never really recovered!
In recent years, I'd considered that a motorbike would be the ideal balance between wanting to be more mobile and not really having enough money to run a car. When Sara decided she wanted to learn to ride, we talked about it and she suggested that we do our Compulsory Basic Training together. Seemed ideal, so it was booked and all seemed positive.
My mind wandered back to my glasses, but I assumed it would be fine. I just needed to wear them a bit more. Sadly, a combination of the constant barrage of things clamouring for my attention and good old fashioned forgetfulness meant I didn't try them till the Friday before our Sunday CBT course. But I assumed it was a mere formality. It would be fine. Plus, surely if the CBT was basic training, the eye sight test would wait until the full bike test?
It wasn't fine and I was wrong. I couldn't see to read the licence plates across the road from my shop counter. Probably only about 12 metres away, not even the required 20/20.5 metres. Crap. I did some research on the DVLA website and discovered that the first part of the course would include a sight test. FUCK. Proper panic set in and I rang my Dad and Sara. I forget who I rang first. Both tried to help and offer advice. It took a long time, but I finally calmed down enough to get another sight test that day.
This time I was very specific about why I wanted glasses. I took my existing glasses along too. The optician did the tests and concluded she couldn't do much better than my current prescription. All the way through, I could not read the bottom line on her chart.
At the end I asked her, did she think I would ever read licence plates at the required distance to be able to drive or ride?
She shifted uncomfortably and there was a long silence.
Finally, she answered. "No. I'm sorry. All I can offer you is a slight refinement on your current glasses."
I'll be honest, my world caved in for a moment. I know it sounds melodramatic, but I felt like I'd been told I would never walk again. We rely on motor vehicles in the Western world - even more in the States, as I discovered when I visited last year - and being told I may not being able to drive made me feel like a second class citizen.
In addition, some important possibilities for my future felt like they'd be snatched away from me. I became terrified that this was the end of more than just the possibility I might drive. Large parts of my rational brain lost control to my emotional brain and I began to freak out.
After the initial shock - and I really did go into shock - I recomposed myself and put on a brave face. But beneath the surface, I was a bubbling volcano of worry and fears. I tried to talk about it, but promptly returned to presenting a calm facade.
It was too late to cancel the CBT and not lose the money. So I went anyway. And washed out within thirty minutes. The instructors handled it badly and I had to do a walk of shame past the others, leaving Sara to do the course on her own. I felt wretched, ashamed, scared and guilty that I'd let her down, as aprt of the reason I was going was that neither of us would have to do it on our own. I spent the day trying to get a grip, but if I'm honest I almost managed it only to COMPLETELY fail in the eleventh hour.
This has continued to plague me this week, reawakening all manner of insecurities and self doubt. I made an even bigger mess than I made on the Sunday, but thankfully it was a wake up call. I couldn't carry on like this.
I've booked ANOTHER sight test for next week, with an independent eye specialist recommended to me by friends (thanks to the Brothers Kelly). I have other contingencies in place too - things like getting a mountain bike again and refocusing my fitness on becoming a stronger cyclist. I tried this back in 2006 when I lived in Covingham but frankly my fitness then was that of UTTER SLOB, so it's probably not a fair assessment of my abilities.
Finally, I decided to fish out all my old sight test results for comparison and write this blog entry as a way of drawing a line under what has gone on thus far.
Now, if you've been reading this blog and the sight test results I've posted you may have noticed something I did this morning (click on any of the images to make them larger if that helps). Let's look again at those results posted together:
WTF? The right eye is the most problematic and there are some clear comparisons between the tests in 1996 and 2011, but the test in 2009 is COMPLETELY different. Which is the one my current glasses prescription is based on. More over, how can the optician last week say she could only slightly refine my prescription when her results are wildly different from the one the glasses were made for? Sure, she didn't have that paperwork because it was an emergency appointment made when I didn't have time to run home and get said results. But I was assured by the staff at Vision Express that they could read my current prescription off my glasses.
Something is clearly amiss. All hope is not lost. Hopefully Keith Holland & Associates can do something about this. Failing that, I have an appointment with my GP the week after that and I'll be asking if he can refer me to anyone who specialises in astigmatism.
It's still been an awful few days. That walk of shame out of CBT will haunt me for some time yet.
But it's time to try again.
