Jed Wolf

I woke up early at about 4:30 am on June 15th and noticed something abnormal was happening in my left eye. At first I thought it was one side of my sleeping face being smushed hard for too long against my pillow. I’d had similar temporary blindness before for several long seconds as an eye collected itself after deep sleep. Assuming this was that, I rested my head on its opposite side for a minute but there was no change. 

I sat up and turned on the light. My right worked normally but my left saw gleaming Georgia low country rivers as seen from a plane at dawn, then swirling neon clouds expanding and contracting in psychedelic water-droplet shapes. In the lower left periphery of my trippy eye, there was one tiny shattered, window pane-like aperture through which I could identify my room illuminated by a table lamp but the swirling kaleidoscope of neon colors, I hadn’t seen since acid in high school, overwhelmed the rest.

I woke Dave up and told him I was blind.

He called his eye doctor and after being rushed in at 8:00 am, I continued on to an urgent appointment with a retinologist who injected me with dye. The accompanying photo shows the blood flow to both my eyes. The one on the left shows significantly fewer blood vessels. Apparently I’d had a rare Ciliorretinal Occlusion during the night – an eye stroke. The minute blood vessels in my left eye were blocked by plaque. The doctor pushed on my eyeball and sucked out some fluid but basically there’s nothing else he could do. Without blood, the tissue was dying. 

There’s a possibility of some improvement especially within the first few days but I’ve since learned from talking to specialists almost daily, the odds aren’t great, my brain will adjust and that will take a lot of time. 

When it happened I couldn’t see shit. I’d lost 90% of my vision in what had been my “good eye”. The eye that could see was impossibly blurry. Dave drove me to Lense Crafters to get some prescription glasses. I’m getting by with an old heavily scratched pair. My brain aches. It’s exhausting and I see things that aren’t there. Earlier the evening a mourning dove flew toward me and it looked like the angel Gabriel.

The constant headache and visual look of things is like how it feels to cross ones eyes without the ability to uncross them. Add depth perception which goes from nothing to a little like in the 3d movie Avitar, especially around humingbirds and flying insects. There are still colorfull flashes and melding of shapes which, though yesterday the darkness increased, I choose to believe the light show is my eye trying to fix itself.

In white areas of my computer screen, I see surreal Hieronymus Bosch-like images. Visually, driving is the worst as is being driven. Everything comes at me from both sides like cheesy cinematic effects and I cannot tell how far or close anything ahead is. After a few days of this to and from doctors appointments, I took a hot bath one night ’til my heart was beating hard, got out, turned on the pool lights, ran out and desperately dove in opening both eyes praying underwater for the movie to end. I’ve called a lot of friends to talk me down this week and have hired a therapist.

My cholesterol has always been on the high side. I’ve had two heart attacks and have six stents but stopped taking statins and blood thinners about 18 years ago because they made me feel achy and foggy. I believed new-age friends who said the drugs were worse for me than cholesterol, so I ate right. I should have kept up with cardiology. I’m lucky.

Yesterday I had two ultrasounds. One of scan of the corotid arteries to my brain and eyes and another scan of my heart. The corotid arteries showed blood moving through but there were several very obvious large chunks of plaque. My heart showed nothing abnormal. I have an appointment to meet with a cardiologist tomorrow morning at 8:30 and am having a brain MRI next week because I’m slurring words which are noticeably harder to find. I believe this might be stress but doctors want to make sure.

From what I understand, I have free floating plaque which like snowflakes gather upon themselves as they do on windshield wipers in a blizzard. Plaques also gets lodged in extremities where blood vessels reduce in size, like in my eye. I could’ve had a major stroke or worse. It’s hard not to imagine one of my corotid chunks calving anytime, especially at 3:00 am. 

There is more light some days but sight has not returned in that eye. Luckily the “window” I saw has remained and I can see peripherally in the far lower left, a rat perhaps or other blurry threat approaching through the narrow aperture. If a pterodactyl were to swoop down from my upper left, I’d be toast. 

I remember when my father cleaned his room and cleared the decks for what inevitably took him out and frankly, I can think of nothing else in the middle of some nights. I’m trying to work but it’s hard to concentrate. I take lots of naps. 

Dave is unbelievably attentive and supportive and after a rough week, I trust I’m now in very good hands medically. I pick up my new glasses tomorrow which will make everything clearer, my skewed vision sharper and my headache more intense. I’m not wearing a patch to try to get my bad eye to work.

I want my friends to know and FB is obviously the way to get the word out. I don’t like bringing it up but I can’t pretend. Please, no sage advice, philosophy or debate and watch descriptive adjectives like “awful.” (I’m having a hard enough time with the tragic voices in my head.) “Hang in there?” imagine the connotations. Frankly, a call would be better. I love hearing actual voices, gallows humor’s fine and laughter. 

Though everything I see skews to the right and I have no depth perception, I’m beginning to garden. Unevenly planting, mulching and tossing weeds at odd angles, I have revelations while cultivating a complex garden that’s there because I’m there. I see swirling colors which aren’t there and am tripping while tripping. It’s not so bad when I relax my mind which I expect will take time. I float in the pool and that helps.

I want to get back in saddle, perhaps bareback, naked etc. ASAP despite the difficulties. I want to prioritize, learn lessons and pick up my life somewhere while letting unearthed parts of me say things which might be disturbing or boring. It’s time to ignore the neighbor’s dog shitting on my front lawn. He thinks it’s his as well. I’m no longer concerned with him or his owner and that’s the sort of early blessing I anticipate my future flowing with.