New Beginnings

It has been nearly two years since I was able to access my blog and to write on the computer. I am so excited to be sitting here at my computer and doing things I used to do with ease. You see, I have had a life altering experience through the loss of most of my eyesight. The cause was Ischemic Optic Neuropathy. Yes, I had never heard of such a thing before myself! It is a rare condition, I learned. I have met only one other person who has it, and I will talk more about that the next time. For now, I just want to say that I am very happy to be writing here once again. I will be posting photos again, and writing again. I have NO IDEA of anyone reads my blog any more or not, but I will write anyway. It feels so GOOD to be able to do it.

My sight left in two stages, very quickly. First, on January first 2007 my left eye went. I was at the gym, and I noticed that my vision was blurry. I commented to my husband that "I don't know what is wrong, but I just cannot see today." Subsequently, I went to the doctors and quickly learned I did not have an eye problem, but I had a medical emergency. Blood tests were done to determine if I had a systemic illness or disease. I did not. Then, I had surgery on my right artery in my temple to remove part of it so determine if I had temporal arteritis...I did not. I am so thankful for that. Finally, the diagnosis was confirmed and I learned about my condition, Ischemic Optic Neuropathy!

I was told that most people only have it on one side. I did not need to worry, I could still manage to see to do my work, but with difficulty. I had problems knowing where things were in space. I had problems reading. But, I continued on, teaching my classes and living my life as usual, but with care and a bit of caution.

I searched the internet for this condition. I soon saw that most people DO get it on both sides, and lose vision in both eyes. I had 10 more months before that happened to me. About the end of October 2007 I again had the severe headaches and my vision began to blur. Once again, I was hit by this condition but now in the other eye.

Next, I will write about what I did after I experienced this sudden sight loss. I have told you what happened, and now I will tell you what I did about it to change my circumstances.

I'm BACK...

In October 2007, shortly after doing my final blog here, I lost most of my eyesight. It has been a long journey since then. I have Ischemic Optic Neuropathy, which is like a stroke behind the eyes and causes vision loss as the optical nerve is destroyed because of lack of oxygen when the stroke occurs. I will write more next time on this journey over the past 20 monrhs. I will write about what happened to me, what I did about it, and what I am learning in the process of it all. It is a new adventure!