GLAUCOMA: THE GAME CHANGER

Yesterday was…not such a great day. Went for a yearly eye exam. Found out I have glaucoma. I’ve been sick to death since the words slid out of the optometrist’s mouth and hit my ears like a sledgehammer. But, honestly, I realized something might be wrong when the assistant repeated the ‘puffer test’ three times. You know, to ensure the results were correct.

Whomp, whomp.

But, she assured me, I shouldn’t worry because the machine “sometimes reads high when there isn’t elevated pressure in the eyes.”

Okie dokie, Brain, don’t worry. Ha! Yeah, not happening.

When the doctor called me back in, literally, as my daughter and I were walking out of the office because he didn’t feel comfortable with me leaving until he did one more check using a blue light, you bet I started panicking. Cue the back-to-back hot flashes, which only made everything worse. But okay, fine. Not a problem. Let’s do this new test. And that’s when the bomb dropped. The pressure in my eyes is, indeed, high. 30 and 32, to be exact. For those who don’t know—myself included until yesterday—the readings should be no higher 20 per eye.

So, yep, I have glaucoma, with no accompanying nerve damage, thank God.

I’ll be real here because that’s the point of this whole blog—for me to be raw and honest about what it’s like to navigate midlife. I immediately started to cry. There I was, sweating and with tears rolling down my face when I asked in a frightened whisper if this meant I am going to go blind. My super nice optometrist assured me I wasn’t going to lose my vision…if I maintained proper management of this degenerative and incurable eye disease. All I heard, though, was that there’s a possibility of going blind. My brain swiftly switched on all the worst-case scenarios.

I won’t see my children’s faces anymore.

Or my husband’s, or my future grandchildren

I’ll lose the ability to watch a movie or read a book with my eyes, so I better get cracking on creating an audiobook account.

At 51, I’ll no longer work because of my future (possibly, without proper management) vision loss.

A thousand fears raced through my mind as I struggled not to cry on the way home because my 14-year-old was with me and I didn’t want to upset her. But I lost it in the shower and dropped to the floor in quiet, wretched sobs. It’s terrifying to know I have a generative eye disease, and until I visit a specialist, I don’t know how bad it is or how this will impact my life…if at all, other than using drops. I’ll find out during that appointment. Until then, I’ll be here, scared, that one day, my world might go black. I’ll try not to dwell on the ‘What If” and instead focus on what I have been for these last few months: my family, my health, and the joy of living each day to its very best.