Reluctant Recovery

It’s been 18 months since I crashed and had an ophthalmologist diagnose that I have physical amblyopia that became a “new” problem when a concussion somehow reset my neurological compensation. At first, I was regularly seeing double, especially when looking downward. Walking down stairs or even stepping off a curb became frightening. When I learned there is now a routine outpatient surgery to correct the dominant underlying cause, I was eager for this fix.

But the surgery requires very careful measurements, taken over time. So I had to revisit at least three times. After the first, I regained confidence moving about. On the second my brain was already adapting enough that the calibration was not worth the surgery, and around that time I began seeing horizontal alignments accurately1.

Today I will have the third measurement, which I expect to discover that I’m fine again and no procedure is needed. Of course the recovery is good news, but I do somewhat wish I could have the hardware repaired rather than depend on the software patch I’ve recently learned is fragile. This last measurement requires I spend 24 hours with one eye dormant, so I’m posting this to explain to the dozens of people I will see in video calls why I’m wearing an eye patch just like when my four-year-old eyes needed to be balanced.