This is a story of sibling relations from a small child’s perspective. I tell it so that you will see how our most fervent childhood dreams come about. Also so you will see how incredibly dumb little kids can be. No. Not dumb. Just shortsighted. From lack of vision. Of what really goes on in the world.
This is also a story of vision. In several parts.
The Gassner Girls
Once upon a time there were two sisters. Let’s call them, just for the sake of, yes, veracity, Lynn and Jane. Lynn, as the elder was much adored by Jane, who wanted nothing more than to be exactly like her big sister. That most specifically included the major feature of Lynn’s life, the eyeglasses she had been wearing since the age of two, when she was diagnosed with strabismus or crossed eyes. Jane coveted those glasses and the privilege that wearing them brought. Like all the attention Lynn got when she talked about her “eye surgery”. And all the time Daddy spent wrapping moleskin around the ear pieces of the glasses. And all the concern Mommy had about where and in what condition those glasses were.
Such was this case of spectacle-envy that every year when the time came to visit the ophthalmologist, Jane wished on whatever lucky charms were currently in her possession that this year, the doctor would finally say that she needed glasses too. And one year, when she was about seven, he finally did. Mommy, being wise to her daughter, quickly took the doctor aside and told him to be alert to a slight case of vision-exam cheating. He assured Mommy that such cheating was impossible. The die was cast: she now had two daughters with poor vision and Jane became the proud wearer of spectacles.
Fast forward a decade or so.
Lynn’s vision issues had multiplied and were made manifest to Jane so that she no longer envied her sister’s eye problems. Also, Jane was now familiar with Dorothy Parker’s words, “Men don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses.” Going into college, Jane just wanted to get rid of the damn things. Fortunately for her, contact lenses had just become readily available. At 17, Jane was fitted for her first pair (green, to follow her obsession with Scarlett O’Hara) and that, she thought, was that. As far as she was concerned, her vision had been restored to normal, at least during the hours when she had her contacts in.
Over the years, Jane was merciless with her contacts. She flipped them in and out of her eyes, washed them in her mouth, and kept them in the same old contact lens solution until it crusted over. Was she told to treat them differently? Of course. Did she care? No way. She was young, and this was her life, and it was going to continue on forever.
This is the point in my story when there should be a plot twist that teaches Jane the error of her eye-slovenly ways. But there isn’t any. She grew up, she grew older, she started taking care of her contacts and treating her eyes as if they were not quite the renewable resource she had once assumed. Somewhere along the way, the knowledge she was accruing included the dire fact that it wasn’t just problems from birth that could gravely affected people’s vision.
It was problems at the other end of life that could be worse.
#WhyEyeFight 
In other words, Jane grew from a dumb little kid to a relatively mature adult wise in what really goes on in the world. Then she started hearing stories about older people–parents of friends and even relatives–who became more or less blind as they got up in years. Something happened to their eyes that left them unable to see what was straight in front of them. It’s called Age-Related Macular Degeneration (AMD), and it describes a condition in which the central part of the retina, the macula, degenerates, leaving vision intact only on the outer rim of the retina. AMD is a progressive disease that is a leading cause of vision loss for people age 50 and older. New cases are diagnosed every year, affecting people’s ability to read, to drive, to watch TV, to safely navigate stairs and to easily perform the myriad of daily tasks that we call life.
Doing her research, as is Jane’s wont, she learned that while there is no cure, research is robust and there are steps you can take to reduce risk of progression, including a healthy lifestyle. In 2001, the National Eye Institute (NEI) published a landmark clinical study, the Age-Related Eye Disease Study (AREDS), which showed that taking a high-potency antioxidant and zinc supplement reducedmay help reduce the risk of progression in people with moderate-to-advanced AMD. AREDS is also the name used to describe supplements that contain this antioxidant and zinc formula. A follow up NEI study in 2013, the AREDS2 studies recommended an update to the original AREDS antioxidant and zinc formula.
This information seemed comforting to Jane, as the description of AMD as creating a black hole in one’s vision, with clarity of sight only on the periphery, struck her as not unlike the end-of-life-as-I-know-it sentences of Alzheimer’s and Lou Gehrig’s Disease (ALS.). Thus, she agreed to be a #WhyEyeFight ambassador for Age-Related Macular Degeneration Awareness Month, sponsored by Bausch + Lomb and Prevent Blindness®, the nation’s oldest volunteer eye health and safety organization. When visiting Joyofsight.com for more information on #AMDAwarenessMonth, Jane’s consciousness was finally raised to the realization that maintaining eye health at her age meant far more than just keeping her contacts clean.
The first step was to acknowledge the reality of AMD and that meant going back to her childhood and the yearly visits to have her eyes dilated. Yes, it’s a pain, but look again at the illustration heading this post: sometimes people with early AMD can be asymptomatic. If they’re not diagnosed, they can’t take steps to help slow the progression of the disease.
I had my dilation exam last week, so I’m good for another year. Go make an appointment today to have yours soon. Join the fight to raise awareness of AMD and motivate others to become AMD Awareness Month Ambassadors by sharing your #WhyEyeFight story on Facebook and Twitter.
Yes, this post is sponsored by Bausch + Lomb, and they provided the compensation and information about AMD and #WhyEyeFight. However, as usual, the opinions are all mine.
¹“Age-related Macular Degeneration”. Neil M. Bressler, M.D; Susan B. Bressler, M.D.; Stuart L. Fine, M.D. for the Retinal Vascular Center, Wilmer Opthalmological Institute, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland USA. Survey of Ophthalmology, Volume 32, Issue 6, May-June 1988, Pages 375-413 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0039625788900525
²National Eye Institute: Facts About Age-Related Macular Degeneration https://nei.nih.gov/health/maculardegen/armd_facts
Thanks for the ‘push’ – I do an annual physical, twice a year to the dentist, I do my nails and hair on a regular basis but I often go 4, 5 or 6 years without checking my eyes. I needed the kick in the butt especially since glaucoma runs in our family.
And cataracts….don’t forget cataracts!
I don’t remember you being in such awe of your sister and her glasses, but I do remember her glasses and the difficulty with her eyes. Thanks for sharing a bit of your childhood and the importance of caring for our eyes.
You have a great way with a pen my dear friend!!!!!
By the time we were best friends, Barb, I had moved into my “boys don’t wear glasses” stage. Actually I first heard that line in 8th grade math. We had a very handsome male teacher and when he said it, Linda Binstock whipped off her glasses. She too got green contacts…must have been a thing.