S-L-O-W Reading

As promised, I have started to use my eye patch on a somewhat regular basis.  This is a way to keep my eye from a type of atrophy. Because the vision in my right eye is so compromised, a big concern is that my brain will "forget" I have two eyes.  Thus, even though I do still have some vision in the affected eye, there's a chance that my brain will get too tired trying to use a gimpy eye and just switch fully to my left, un-affected eye.  The result: full blindness--regardless of how much vascular or inflammatory activity I may actually be experiencing.

My goal is to finish reading Gilead by Marilynne Robinson using only my right eye.  I have about 100 pages left to go, so this could take a long long while.  Why this book?  I actually started reading it a while ago but tend to put it down after a few pages because it makes me drowsy.  The book is actually not bad, just very quiet in tone so I tend to zone out.  I figured that I probably won't be able to read more than a couple pages with the eye patch on anyways, so it would be an ideal read.  Secondly, though the print is pretty standard (12 pt), the lines are double-spaced and much easier on the eyes---errr, eye.  

The other night I tried reading as much as I could before I became completely exhausted.  I survived only two pages before I thought my eyeball would fall out.  It took me about 10 minutes to piece together the two pages.  Afterward, I re-read the passages with both eyes to check my comprehension.  I discovered that I tend to have the greatest difficulty with the text near the margins of the center book binding.  This makes sense because I no longer have central vision in my right eye.  

All in all, not a bad experience I guess.  It was frustrating when I couldn't make out some letters no matter how hard I tried.  But it was comforting to know that I could read some text, even with a lot of effort.  Above all, it made me grateful that I still had one good eye.  What a difference it makes to still have one completely unaffected eye...