I almost cried in my eye doctor’s office this morning. I did cry when I got in the car, but they were tears of relief. I’m going to be honest, the last six or seven years have been scary for me. During a routine exam, I was diagnosed with a progressive eye disease and started using drops to try and control my eye pressure.
We went through all kinds of drops without any of them working. Since my cousin is blind in one eye and has lost part of his sight in the other one due to this disease, I knew it was vital to get the pressure down. After months of trial and error, we found a combination of drops that helped a little. The pressure wasn’t as low as my doctor would have liked, but it was some progress.
My right eye is the worst. When I close the left one and look at a page with just my right eye, it looks like I took a gray pencil and marked out areas on the page. The left eye helps to compensate for the loss of sight in the right eye, and I’m so grateful that I can still read and drive and be independent. So you can imagine how frightening it was when I had two retinal tears in that left eye last fall, leaving the sight in that one in jeopardy for several weeks.
I know we aren’t supposed to worry, and I’ve tried to trust God through all of this—but there’s something just really frightening when it comes to the prospect of losing your sight.
I had two more eye surgeries in June. Today’s appointment was to see if the surgeries worked. When the nurse checked the pressures in my eyes, they were the lowest they’ve been in several years. It makes me cry just to type those words. Lord, I thank You so much!
The disease isn’t gone. It’s something I’ll deal with for the rest of my life. But these surgeries bought me time—more days and months to see the precious faces of my grandbabies, to share the beauty of a sunset with my husband, to write and edit my book projects and articles, to drive and see where I’m going, and to read the labels on the cans in my pantry.
I don’t ever want to take any of that for granted. So, today, I just want to thank Him for doctors who go the extra mile to help their patients, for family and friends who pray, for answered prayers and for the precious-beyond-words blessing of the gift of sight.
