My optic nerves are angy!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Stan Lee would have written this line unironically, circa\n1965, in an issue of The Incredible Hulk<\/em>\nor Avengers<\/em> with a cover burst that\nscreamed, “Tremble before the rage of the monster’s eyes!” It also happens to describe what’s happening\ninside my own eyes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I spent almost a week in the hospital recently.\u00a0 My vision suddenly turned strange<\/em>, and I thought I could be having a stroke. I even blamed myself — should I have gone to the hospital sooner, might my day out in DC (where I went to the National Cathedral<\/a>) have dehydrated me and caused this?<\/p>\n\n\n\n As it turned out, I was not<\/em> having a stroke.\u00a0 But my blood pressure had reached truly insane levels, and I was very much at risk<\/em> for a stroke sooner or later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What was wrong with my vision? At first, it was like looking through gauze\nover part of my left eye, then it was tinted, and they it grayed out. There were flashes of color, pinpricks of\nlight, swirling lines. It was confined\nmainly to part of my left eye, but then I’d see a shimmer in other parts of the\neye. If it were a blood clot in the eye,\nthe ER doctor said it was too late to save my vision. But if it were due to blood pressure, which\nsometimes happens, then bringing that down could restore my sight. With medication my blood pressure came down\nto a high, but not insanely so, level, but my vision remained strange, filled\nwith its swirling gray shadows and blind spots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After my discharge, I saw an ophthalmologist this week.\u00a0 She got my eyes high as a kite and took a look inside.\u00a0 There was no blood or clotting; the worst case scenario, she said, would have been blood in my eyes. \u00a0Instead, she found that I am suffering from optic nerve inflammation<\/a>.\u00a0 My right eye is slightly inflamed and shows some signs of healing. \u00a0My left eye is severely inflamed.\u00a0 From her reaction, I don’t believe she’d ever seen a case as extreme. \u00a0Optic nerve inflammation works itself out over a period of several months, and it was probably triggered by the high blood pressure. \u00a0When the inflammation goes down, my vision will begin to return. \u00a0I’m cautious enough that I want to write “may” there, but “will” was her prognosis.\u00a0 By summer I will hopefully be good again and able to revel completely (or near enough) in the wonders of the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Avengers needn’t assemble. Thor has no need to say nay. My angry optic nerves don’t threaten the\nworld. I can see moderately well, though\nwith some significant though not dangerous impairment. It will take some getting used to, and I will\nneed a much larger monitor at work so I can scale up Windows 10 to something I\ncan read better. I also need a new\nprescription for my glasses, but with my eyes so wonky there’s no point, so I\nmay buy reading glasses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I don’t want to lose my vision, and if I take my medications\nand watch my blood pressure, fingers crossed I won’t.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My optic nerves are angy! Stan Lee would have written this line unironically, circa 1965, in an issue of The Incredible Hulk or Avengers with a cover burst that screamed, “Tremble before the rage of the monster’s eyes!” It also happens to describe what’s happening inside my own eyes. I spent almost a week inContinue reading “The New Optical Adventure”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":32278,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32277\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/32278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}