R. Leib's Blog: Dream State - Posts Tagged "getting-old"

I haven't posted the last two weeks for a variety of reasons. First and foremost, I have found a brand new thrill of getting old, vitreous detachment. The symptoms of this are all sorts of shapes showing up in your vision. They are called floaters. It's not that I haven't had floaters before. I have. They were small little dots that were easily ignored and eventually went away. These are much bigger and much more persistent. I went to my ophthalmologist, who is very nice as well as being a good doctor. I was concerned that I had retinal detachment. That's pretty scary. Like going blind scary. After a complete exam, I was relieved when he told me that I had no signs of retinal detachment or any other serious eye disorder. Vitreous detachment is annoying, but does not require treatment. So, I am back to work on "The Tourist of Infinity", after having lost a week to unfounded anxiety.

I never needed glasses, when I was younger. I had 25/20 vision, which means that, at 25 feet, I could see what a normal person can see at 20 feet. This lasted until my 40s. Due, in part, to all the time I spent staring into computer screens, my vision deteriorated. I first noticed it while trying to read the TV Guide. (The earlier format had a lot of small print.) I tried getting glasses by prescription, but they did not do anything for me. I bought those glasses you see in drug stores. I need them only for reading and small work like threading a needle. The real issue came, when I tried to figure out how I was going to keep them with me. Since I had never needed glasses before, I had not develop a habit of carrying them. They did not fit into the arrangement of my life. My solution is that I have glasses secreted everywhere I go. There is a pair where I sit, and I am wearing another pair now as I type at the computer. I have kitchen glasses for when I cook or bake. Another pair of glasses, which I damaged and repaired, are put to use in my den, when I paint or work on projects. Needless to say, my wife, who has had normal glasses habits just about all her life, laughs at me all the time.

As I have gotten older, I endured a wide variety of time's insults to my body and mind. Many of them were anticipated. Others were not. Most I have taken in stride, amazed that I lasted this long.

I always thought of myself as being six feet tall, as measured in my youth and noted on my driver's license. Recently, I found out that I have shrunk two inches. Of all the things that aging has done to me, for some reason this one most of all makes me feel violated.