Eyes And Photography

Eyeballs courtesy of Scary Eyeball Clipart.

It has really hit home for me over the past year about how important my vision and healthy eyes are to me.  Not just for photography, but of course, everyday in every situation.

Over the past four years, I've suffered from what I thought were just dry eyes.  No glaucoma, no torn retina, no macular degeneration, just constant irritation from dry eyes.  It got so bad that one morning when I awoke, my eyelid was stuck to my eyeball.  That was interesting. I found myself using eye drops to lubricate my eyes all day and I would wake up every night at least once, if not twice, to put drops in my eyes.  Not fun.

At the same time, I noticed my vision was worsening.  Typically, after age 40, our eyes no longer are able to focus closely and we wear glasses to help us read or see things up close.  I went through that but this was different.  In recent months, I couldn't focus on anything.  No strength reading glasses helped me focus clearly.  I really had to work to see clearly with the help of my brain interpolating what I was trying to see.  My distance vision, which I had improved in 2000 with LASIK surgery was also becoming more and more out of focus.  Some days I couldn't even read the giant green signs on the interstate highways here in the U.S.  It turned out that I couldn't focus clearly up close nor far away.

Also, I found myself not being able to see if an image was in focus, in-camera or on the monitor of my computer.  I found I kept moving my diopter knob on my cameras chasing my changing vision.  When trying to edit images, I found myself moving forward and backward trying to find a distance where the image looked in focus.  I couldn't go on this way, that was for sure.

I had gone to have my eyes examined twice over the past year by a reputable optometrist equipped with the latest computerized equipment.  Also, I spent over $900 US for two pairs of glasses and neither worked.  Why?  My vision seemed to be changing every day—every hour sometimes.

When my wife found out she needed cataracts removed, I decided to accompany her to the ophthalmologist to have my eyes thoroughly examined by a medical doctor instead of an optometrist.  As I said, I thought I just had dry eyes.  Wrong.

It turned out I had four different things going on with my eyes which has been causing my vision issues.  In both eyes the oil ducts on both lower and upper eyelids were completely clogged, hence the dry eyes.  My eyelids where the oil ducts are located, were red and swollen (blephritis) by irritation from rosacea, a condition not uncommon for people of northern European decent.  Third, there is a layer of tissue that lays over and is firmly attached to the cornea, which we look through called the epithelium.  Mine had detached.  Instead of it being smooth so I could clearly and consistently see through it, it was wavy.  That is why my vision changed daily.  No amount eyewear correction would take care of that.  Finally, I have some cataracts as well!  That can cause a bit of blurriness and can change one's color perception as the cataract will shift everything toward the yellow.  But, as we know, the brain adapts and we don't notice the subtle changes.

After a couple of procedures, one having the epithelium scraped off my eye so it could grow back smooth and reattach to the cornea, medication, a great ophthalmologist and some time, my vision has been restored to 20/20, or like it was before all this started happening.  No more lubricating eye drops either!  What a welcome relief just to have good vision back and know that my eyes are not deteriorating beyond any restoration of good sight.  Also, It is nice to sleep the night through without having to wake up and put eye drops in my eyes.

I guess my point of all of this is that I took my clear eyesight for granted and didn't pay much attention to it for far too long.  Things really hit hard when I realized that nothing was clear, I couldn't manually focus a camera and, heck, I couldn't really tell if an image was or was not sharply in focus.  That was how bad things became.

Lesson learned:  Never take your eyesight, hearing, taste, smell, your general heart, brain or body health or anything else about yourself for granted and assume everything will work as it should for the remainder of your life.  Your ability to function keenly (and safely) is too important to take for granted.

Sometime later this year or early next year, I suspect, I'll have the cataracts removed.  If my surgery is as successful as my wife's cataract surgeries, I will be able to see 20/20 in the distance as well as read without glasses.  Isn't technology great?

Join me over at Instagram @dennisamook or my website, www.dennismook.com. 

Thanks for looking. Enjoy! 

Dennis A. Mook 

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