I haven’t posted in a while, for no other reason than I didn’t feel like it.

I’m not nervous or anxious, but I would like to get this over with and see how everything turns out. On Friday, April 8, I will be undergoing my 3rd eye surgery in a year to see if we (the doctors and I) can eliminate my double vision. My first two surgeries were attempts to reduce the discrepancy between the vertical and horizontal images, respectively. It was a long shot, but worth a try.

My eye surgeon is excellent and he gave me a detailed run-down of all of the risks and explained that, although he and his team were optimistic, it may not work. I think he was relieved by my nonchalant attitude toward the whole thing. The plan this time is to get the images close on one plane, then use prism lens glasses to meld them together. Despite his best efforts, the previous surgeries didn’t work out perfectly, but I have complete trust and faith in his abilities – otherwise I wouldn’t have wanted to try a third time – and I can’t help but be hopeful again.  That said, I have no expectations.

Saying I’m apathetic makes it seem like I don’t care about anything, which couldn’t be further from the truth. So I guess that’s not a precise description of my attitude toward this surgery. Perhaps it’s more helpful if I relate it to my previous post about living with brain injury and living the past 8 years of my life. I have lived with double vision and all of its ramifications on my mobility and balance since August 1, 2003. It  effects how I see the world and how I interact within it. I tend not to talk about it much because it’s just part of my life and personally, I don’t find it very interesting. I talk more about my mobility and balance because that is more apparent to others, so it’s what I’m asked about. Vision, sight, whatever you want to call it, is personal. I can still see where I’m going, what I’m doing and I don’t get nauseous. That’s why it’s difficult for most people to truly see that it’s a major problem that effects every other part of my life. Until my brain injury, my eyes were great. Now they’re stubborn and they refuse to cooperate with each other.

Speaking of stubborn, I’m stubborn. Right now I am approaching the surgery with a care-free attitude and I honestly don’t anticipate that changing. However, if this surgery doesn’t work out perfectly, I’m sure I’ll be devastated, at least for a few days. Then hopefully it’ll be back to more sanguine thoughts of invincibility (more on that later). The problem is, I won’t give up hope or ‘let it go’ and move on. I will move on, but it often takes me longer than it should. For almost 8 years, I have genuinely welcomed and nourished my stubborn attitude that not only will things work out, but that they’ll work out exactly the way I’ve thought they would.

That’s right, I said invincibility – I should probably qualify that. I don’t mean physically invincible; I may actually may be more prone to injury than most people. It’s that when I do get hurt, the pain lasts for very little time before I begin looking at it objectively. Maybe it’s not ‘invincibility’, it’s more that I know I’ll be fine no matter what happens. Actually, scratch all of that invincibility talk, I guess it’s more arrogance or optimistic confidence. Leading me to a philosophical/English question – what’s the difference between being arrogant and being sanguine? Is it just being cheerful, or is it more the connotation of arrogance? But I digress. My point is – I’ll be ok.

If the surgery works out perfectly, my life will change. Maybe how I think, but probably not how I think. Then again, the surgery may not work out as hoped. It’ll be nice to know if my double vision can be at least partially corrected (this surgery) or if I’ll need more surgery. If this surgery doesn’t do it and there is another potential surgery, I feel like it’d be very short-sighted not to go for it, but it would still suck. Either way, I’ll be fine.