Diving into Depth

March 31, 2013, originally posted to facebook

Happy Easter, Happy Passover and happy sunday to all. Now on to myself!

 Day 5: another new experience - talking about myself so much. Not used to it. I don't think I can keep it up forever, but since all this is too exciting for me not to share, and since the wonderful encouragement continues, I will stoically find a way to muster on! *cough*

 Anyway, I had four glorious hours of depth yesterday. It's suggesting itself a bit this morning so I want to make this update brief to take advantage of what appear to be the golden hours. It seemed to go away when I had a nap yesterday and never came back, but I'm keeping the faith and have rounded the corner in terms of my attitude toward it. This is all miraculous.

A few notable observations:

 - a fried egg looks like the surface of the moon

 - being in the car is a different experience. The frame of the car seemed much closer to me, and I felt much more contained than previously. I wonder if I will experience claustrophobia from this. I don't tend to suffer phobias, and seeing as that my biggest childhood fear was being in a house fire and my house burned down senior year, you can say I'm more afraid of having a phobia than anything, as it will inevitably come true. I'm phobiphobic.

 - my venture outside yesterday was to look at an open house (our 3-year epic journey to buy a house in the Boston area is another sadsack blog for another time) and found incredible challenge navigating the other visitors and actually trying to have a critical eye on the house. I got quickly overwhelmed, and felt much more comfortable standing in one spot and letting folks walk around me. We didn't make an offer

- however, having depth made navigating a space easier in some ways. Before, it was much harder for my brain to prioritize objects in a room, especially in motion. The thing in the foreground had the same importance as those in the background, even with the secondary cues available to me. I tend to look at one thing, then another, then another, then another, then figure out how to move. This makes things like grocery shopping during busy hours incredibly stressful. I'm looking at you, Market Basket. I know, that place is stressful for everyone. Anyway, when I see with depth, I have much more of an idea of the relative position of objects in the room, and more helpfully, the space available between those objects. I can plot a course more easily, and I can prioritize objects more effectively. If the depth sticks around, I think eventually this will make navigating spaces much much easier to do. My understanding is that people with binocular vision tend to fix their gaze wide when navigating a space, or driving or riding their bike, taking in the whole scene and understanding their place in it as opposed to focusing on details. I have had great trouble with this to date, and am sincerely hoping that I can learn to do this.

- points of light seem much brighter, and I have a sensation that the photons are flying at me. I have no idea what that's about. That might also be because both eyes are focused on the same spot, thus maximizing the light that comes from those spots.

 - sometimes the depth feeling strikes me like a shimmering. The object is not quite solid. I expect this is the brain figuring stuff out.

 - even when I don't have depth, I often have a consistent low-level nausea, especially when I'm concentrating on an object. I assume that's my brain continuing to figure things out

 - it is very weird to talk about my brain as a separate entity from myself, but here we are.

 - water in motion is so gosh-darned fascinating I could stare into the sink for hours. Pouring water or coffee is very cool too, it really seems to stand out

 Other than that, I'm out of percosets, but thankfully the pain is subsiding to "discomfort". My eye is back to looking fire engine red, but thankfully no crustiness. Until today I could really feel the sutures in there, like sand under the eyelid, but I have gotten used to it and don't think about them anymore. I have some interesting exercises to do, and folks are very kindly referring to people who could help me I will chat with my surgeon tomorrow and find out what she sees as next steps. I have a checkup with her next week. Hopefully by then I will be cleared to wear my contact lenses again and then things will really rock. I'm contemplating going back to work tomorrow, but my eyes do get tired very easily so I wonder how it will be to be back staring at a monitor all day. I will have to take frequent breaks. Good excuse to get up from my desk and go hassle people in person. We'll see how today goes. Anyway, for those celebrating today (or this week), have a wonderful holiday. Everyone else, get outside, looks like a good one in the making. Love and more soon.