Woodbridge, VT ~ 2018
Before stereopsis is actually experienced by the patient, there is nothing one can do or say which will adequately explain to him the actual sensation experienced. -Dr. Frederick W. Brock
After a good night’s sleep James’s vision improved a little, but not enough for his liking.
“Good morning, honey,” Melody said. “How do things look today?’
“Not as bad, but not great. I’m just hoping I can do a full day’s work tomorrow without much problem. Seems like mid-range for screens and books isn’t too bad,” James said. “Maybe I can check out that Fixing My Gaze book Edward sent me.”
“The kids want to go on a hike today after church,” Melody said. “Maybe it’ll do us all some good to get some fresh air. You should take your camera.”
“Yeah I’ve been wondering if I’ll be able to see well enough to take pictures. We’ll see, I guess.”
That afternoon they headed to the woods, the kids taking turns with Willy, and James brought his camera.
“Hey Dad, check out this cool pattern in the wood of this fallen tree,” Jessica said. “You should take a picture.”
“OK, sweetie, I’ll see what I can do.” James apprehensively got out his camera, tripod, and macro lens, unsure if he’d be able to see well enough to take a photo worth looking at. To his surprise, when he looked through the viewfinder, everything looked sharp.
“Huh, that’s weird,” he said, mostly to himself, as the rest of the family had moved farther down the trail. He lowered the camera and looked at the scene without it. Still blurry. Looking through the camera again: all was well.
“I wonder if a different lens would be any different?” He switched to the standard lens and the results were the same. “Crazy. I need to tell Dr. Goodrich about this.” For most of the rest of the afternoon he trailed after the family, finding beauty and wonder wherever he stopped and focused his camera. The temperatures were a little too warm for ice formations though.
When they returned home he took a minute to leave Dr. Goodrich a voicemail about his discovery, and made a mental note to bring his camera in to his appointment. He dug around his closet and found his smaller camera bag, which looked a little like a trapezoidal man-purse.
“What do you need the little bag for?” Melody asked. “Going out again?”
“No. It’s the weirdest thing,” James said. “I figured out when I was taking shots in the woods that I can see clearly through the camera, even if my vision is fuzzy without it.”
“Well, that’s good news, right?”
“Yeah, I wonder what Dr. Goodrich will make of it,” James said. “So I figured I’d take my camera with me wherever I go, in case my vision gets worse.”
Melody laughed.
“What?” James asked, looking annoyed.
“Sorry.” She tried to look serious. “No, I think that’s a good idea,” Melody said. “I was just picturing you balancing a camera in front of your face while driving down the road.”
“Hopefully it doesn’t come to that,” James said, smiling. “I could set up the tripod in my lap!” James laughed. “But that would pretty much kill the little peripheral vision I’ve got left. Unless I use the fish-eye lens! That would create its own problems though. But maybe it would be a good practice to take the camera everywhere anyway. See what I can see, you know? Even if its not in the woods or by the creek.”
“True,” Melody agreed. She stepped toward him, arms wide, and they embraced. “Whatever’s going on with this,” she whispered in his ear, “I’m sure it will work out, one way or another.” She pulled her head back and looked into his eyes, one at a time. “Who knows? Maybe this situation is God’s weird way of answering my prayers for you.”
James pulled away, looking confused. “What do you mean?”
She hesitated. “Well, I was just thinking about the line in ‘Amazing Grace’ this morning: ‘I once was lost, but now I’m found, was blind, but now I see.’”
“Yeah, I’m familiar,” James said, rolling his eyes. “I sing it to the kids before bed every night. Or at least I did before they got too cool for the bedtime routine.”
“I know, but maybe its too familiar now, you know? I guess I’m just saying sometimes things get worse before they get better, and sometimes things get way worse, but then way better. Wasn’t that the idea Pastor Dave kept repeating this morning: ‘Death is just a prelude to resurrection.’”
“Sounds like something Edward would say,” James said.
“Exactly! The night before the dawn. The winter before the spring. The seed in the ground, waiting for warmth,” Melody said.
“The buds on the trees in winter, waiting for the light,” James joined in, despite himself.
“‘The cross before the crown,’ right? I think that’s C.S. Lewis?”
“Sounds like him,” James said. “But what the heck does this have to do with my messed up vision? Are you saying I need to go blind before I can see clearly again? That doesn’t make any sense.” James voice was on edge again.
“No, I’m not saying that,” Melody started pacing the room. “Well, maybe I am, but, really, I don’t know. I’m just saying God works in mysterious ways, you know? Maybe this will turn out for good.”
“You’re always trying to find a meaning in everything, aren’t you?” James said, a little more aggressively than he wanted.
Melody looked away, and said quietly, “I guess so. But maybe this will change you, change us, in a way that we’d never expect.” She stopped and glanced over at him.
“Yeah, that would be nice.” James sighed. “I wish I had your faith, my love.”
“I think you do.” Melody said softly.
“I think I did, at least,” James said, looking away. “I’m not so sure anymore. We’ll see, I guess.” He looked up and gave her a sad smile.
~~~
Later that evening, when everybody else in the house gathered around the TV, James snuck upstairs to their bedroom with the book Edward sent him, and settled in the armchair by the window.
“OK, Edward, as usual you’ve got an uncanny sense of timing,” he said as he nervously opened the book. Willy lifted his head up from his little bed in the corner. “Sorry, Willy, I wasn’t talking to you.” Willy stood up, stretched, did a couple circles, laid back down, and let out an exaggerated sigh.
As he turned to the Forward (by Oliver Sacks, of all people), James had a sense he was approaching the edge of a deep canyon. Soon a paragraph jumped off the page: After having lived in a flat world for fifty years, Sue felt this sudden leap into three-dimensionality as a revelation. Her world was now so full of a new sort of visual beauty and wonder so deep that three years later...she was still enraptured by it.
James caught his breath. “Wait, this is a true story of someone who went from seeing in 2D to 3D? I thought that was impossible.” He closed the book and scanned the back cover: ...Barry had been cross-eyed since early infancy, and told that there was no way she could ever see in 3D. But after intensive training, she was able to accomplish what was once considered impossible.
“Huh. Must be nice, accomplishing the impossible. I’m guessing both of her eyes could actually see though,” James said. Willy sighed again in the corner.
Once he started, he couldn’t stop reading. Melody eventually came to bed. “How’s the book?” she asked.
“Uh, I get the idea Edward knew exactly what he was doing when he sent me this. This could be huge, but I’m not sure yet,” James said.
“Oh really? Well, I’m going to sleep now. I’d love to hear all about it soon though. Are you staying up?”
“Yeah, I can’t put this down. Do you want me to go downstairs?” James said.
“No, just turn of the bright light, please. Will you be OK with the little lamp?”
“Sure, that’s fine.” Willy was snoring, or at least breathing heavily, and soon Melody joined him. James had no interest in sleep. His pulse raced as he turned the pages, although it wasn’t exactly Michael Chrichton.
Still, he was engrossed in the life story of Dr. Susan Barry, a woman, who, much like him, couldn’t see in 3D. She did have full use of both her eyes, but since they weren’t aligned, her brain switched back and forth between them. But they never worked in tandem. She happened to be a neuroscientist who studied the ‘plasticity’ of the brain, or its ability to change and re-learn over time. Dr. Barry believed, and taught, that most of the plasticity of the brain occurred at a young age, so once a certain threshold was crossed, very little could be changed for the major functions of the brain, including vision. But more recent research challenged this assumption, as did the experiences of some surprising case studies. Could the brain indeed be “re-wired” even at a late age? Could the neural pathways in the brain, once thought immutable, be modified by un-learning, or re-learning, or even learning for the first time? Could an old dog really learn new tricks?
He looked over at Willy, who was clearly having an interesting dream. His little paws were working in his sleep, and he was quietly barking, probably pursuing a squirrel or chicken in his dreams. “I wonder what you see in your dreams, little Willoughby?” he whispered.
James paused and compared his situation with the author’s. “Well, she’s got two eyes, and I only have one. So even if she figured out how to make her eyes work together late in life, what good would that do me?” Despite his doubts, and the late hour, he felt compelled to continue.
Dr. Barry’s story unfolded, and as promised in the subtitle, she did indeed achieve 3D vision after a lifetime of being a “flat-earther.” Her rapturous descriptions of seeing true depth for the first time were a shock for James.
I was completely unprepared for my new appreciation of space and for the deep feelings of joy and wonder, the enormous emotional high, that these novel sights gave me. To experience for the first time seeing the most ordinary things in stereo feels like scaling a mountain and witnessing your first mountaintop view.
On and on it went. Each scene of her new wonder, looking at a tree, seeing the snow fall, felt like a fresh arrow piercing his heart.
Most unusual: the space between trees was apparent. It was as if I had stepped inside a painting that I had spent my whole life observing. I was awed and moved to tears. I had never experienced a forest in this way. The depth of space and emotion was overwhelming.
And the coup de grâce: Most surprising to me was that the change in my vision affected the way that I thought.
He felt like the guy at the end of one of the Tolkien movies: Boromir, the tragic figure who stayed behind so the others could escape. He was shot, over and over, with big, black arrows unleashed from the monsters who surrounded him, until he collapsed.
Suddenly James threw the book across the room, which crashed against the opposite wall. Willy barked loudly. Melody stirred and looked up. Tears flowed from James’s eyes as he yelled, “Fuck!”
Melody stirred and raised her head. “What’s going on, love?” she said. She looked over at the clock. “Come on, James. It’s 4 in the morning. What are you thinking? Come to bed already.”
She turned toward James and noticed his tears. “Honey, are you OK?”
“What the holy fuck!” James yelled. Willy retreated under the bed.
“What’s wrong?” Melody got out of bed and approached him.
“Why would Edward, of all people, do this to me?!” he said, sobbing and breathing hard.
“What do you mean?” Melody said. “What happened? What did Edward do?”
“He sent me this fucking book, that’s what he did.”
“I don’t understand,” Melody said.
“Exactly. Exactly! You don’t understand, and neither did I until I read that.” He crossed the room and picked up the book. “I was much better off before I read it. ‘Ignorance is bliss,’ right? Stupid piece of shit!” He threw the book again, blindly, and it crashed into the window, breaking a pane. “Fuck.” Cold air rushed in. Willy barked from under the bed.
“Calm down love, I’m sure it’ll be OK. Just calm down, please. You’re going to wake up the kids.”
“Don’t tell me to calm down! I’m always calm, and I’m sick of being calm, OK? I’m good and angry right now. I don’t want to be fucking calm, OK?!” He reached for the book again, and Melody tried to intercept it. In the brief scuffle she cut her hand on the broken glass. “Aaagh!” she blurted, as blood began to flow down her wrist.
“Oh no, I’m so sorry,” James said. The spell was broken, and his anger vanished. He was shaking and sweaty. “Shit.”
Melody ran to the bathroom to wash and bandage her cut while James cooled down and picked up the glass on the floor. For the moment he appreciated the cool night air coming through the broken window.
She came back into the bedroom. “You OK?” James asked.
“Tis but a scratch,” she said in her best British accent, trying to lighten the mood.
“A scratch? Your arm's off!” James replied, almost automatically.
“I’ve had worse.” She smiled.
“I’m sure you have, my love. Me too.” James took a step toward her and they embraced. He melted into her arms and openly wept.
“Let it out, James. Let it all out. It’s OK,” she assured him. He cried in her arms for several more minutes.
They settled into the bed and she asked, “You want to tell me what this is all about?”
“Not really, at least not right now. I’m exhausted. I’m sorry,” James said.
“I’m sorry too, love. I love you. Let’s try to get some sleep before the alarm goes off.”
James laid there for a couple more hours, once again listening to his wife and dog sleep peacefully, while he stared at the ceiling fan in the dim light. He was pretty sure it looked a lot more blurry than it did the day before.
~~~
The next morning, after he helped get the kids out the door, James called his boss. “Hey, Steve, I need to go to the doctor this morning. Having issues with my eyes. I should be online soon though.”
He walked to Dr. Goodrich’s office with his camera and his book. He noticed an eddy in the creek as he crossed over the small bridge, so he stopped and took a few shots of the light swirling around a patterned stone. He was relieved to see his vision was clear as ever through the camera.
He was led to the same exam room he visited over the weekend and waited for the doctor. He paged through the book, wondering what, if anything, he found in Fixing My Gaze he should share with Goodrich.
There was a soft knock on the door and Dr. Goodrich appeared. “James, my good man, how is your vision today? Any better?”
“No, I don’t think so. It got better yesterday, but then worse again. Here’s the weird thing I figured out…” He removed his camera from the small case on his shoulder and put it up to his eye. “Everything looks perfect when I’m looking through the camera.”
“Huh,” Dr. Goodrich looked at the camera, looked at James’s face, and then stared at the ceiling for a while. “Hmmm. Let me try something.” He got out a pair of glasses, or something in the shape of a pair of glasses. Instead of lenses, it had thick black plastic with pinholes scattered over it. He placed them on James’s face.
“Tell me, how does it look through the pinholes?”
“Wow, actually, that’s pretty good,” James said. “Except for the black parts, of course.”
“Of course,” Dr. Goodrich said. “This isn’t intended to be a solution, but rather a tool for diagnosis. I think your camera is mimicking the pinhole effect.”
“So what does that mean?” James asked.
“If you can see clearly though a pinhole, but otherwise not, it may mean that your iris is unable to contract well on its own. The light is bending through the pinhole, or your camera, to make up for what your iris isn’t doing,” Dr. Goodrich said.
“Why isn’t my iris doing its thing?” James said, looking confused. “I thought you said everything looked good.”
“Well, when we dilated your eye, which was a wonderful adventure, it intentionally weakened your iris, so I could get a better look inside your eye.” Dr. Goodrich said. “As for why your iris isn’t contracting well now, there could be many reasons, many of which are not physiological.”
“Such as…?”
“Trauma, disease, drugs, stress, to name a few. You ever see somebody high on drugs and their pupils are huge? Same idea.”
“Oh, OK. But I’m not high, nor have I been in a while,” James said.
“Good to know. But you may have experienced trauma recently, or even in the past. I don’t see any evidence of disease,” Dr. Goodrich said, “but an autonomic neuropathy is possible, which itself can be triggered by stress, anxiety, or trauma.”
“An auto-something neuro-what?” James asked. “Isn’t this getting a little out in the weeds?”
“Autonomic neuropathy. Disease or dysfunction of the involuntary nervous system, in layman’s terms. Diabetes is the most common cause, but there are many potential causes.”
“Oh, OK. So is there a treatment? I don’t have diabetes, although given the amount of Skittles I eat, Melody tells me I’ll be getting it any day now, despite my girlish figure.” James said.
“The treatment, as always, depends on the cause,” Dr. Goodrich said.
“So what’s causing it for me?” James was getting impatient.
“I don’t know.” The doctor was getting weary of the conversation as well. “As I said, there are many potential causes.”
“Great.”
“Recent research has uncovered some previously unknown, or at least heretofore unacknowledged, connections between the mind and the body,” Dr. Goodrich said. “Most of us are at least somewhat aware that stress and trauma can affect our health. The science, it seems, is finally catching up.”
“So are you saying that my vision issue is due to stress or trauma?” James’s eyes narrowed.
“No, but I am saying it is possible, and we now know it is far more likely than previously thought. You should certainly rule out disease and other physiological causes. You should consider seeing a specialist in Boston. They’ll be able to find out more there for you.”
“Great, Boston. My favorite place in the world,” James said, eyes rolling. “Every time I drive in Boston my blood pressure skyrockets.”
“Once you rule out the physiological, which we’ve done to some degree here, then you may need to ask the harder questions, especially concerning childhood trauma, which is all too common. Are you familiar with the book The Body Keeps the Score?”
“I’ve heard of it,” James said. “I think Melody’s friend recommended it to her.”
“You may want to check it out, at least eventually. As for your concern right now, I’m glad to have ruled out obvious eye diseases, and even most of the more obscure ones. I’m confident you have a healthy eye.” Dr. Goodrich said. “But if you’d like to get a second opinion with an eye specialist, I have one who I highly recommend, not to mention world-renowned.”
“Where is he located?” James asked.
“She is in Boston. Dr. Cecilia Schneider. I can give you a referral if you’d like. She’s also a top biotechnology researcher, doing some exciting cutting-edge research with vision biomechatronics over in Switzerland,” Dr. Goodrich said.
“Boston? Great. Go Sox and all that. I’ve actually got an art show in Boston soon, so maybe I should get used to the place.” James grimaced. “Well, I’m glad to know things look good to you, but it still doesn’t look good to me. So I guess it’s Boston, here we come. Again. Heaven help us.”
“Very well, James. I’ll let Joan at the front desk know, and you should receive a call from Dr. Schneider’s office soon. I’m sure they’re booking months out, since she’s in Europe for much of her time, but perhaps you’ll get lucky and they’ll have a cancellation, if you’re willing to go last minute.”
“Last minute for a 3-hour drive into traffic hell? Sure, bring it on,” James said.
Dr. Goodrich opened the door. “Good to see you, James. Call me any time, and let me know how things go with Dr. Schneider.”
“Many thanks, Dr. Goodrich. And thanks so much for helping out this weekend especially,” James said.
“My pleasure. Just don’t pass out on me again, OK?” Dr. Goodrich smiled.
“I’ll do my best,” James said, “but most days I don’t feel like I have much control over anything, you know?”
“I think you’re going to be OK, James,” Dr. Goodrich said.
“We’ll see.”