“One shall be born from small beginnings which will rapidly become vast. This will respect no created thing, rather will it, by its power, transform almost every thing from its own nature into another.” -Leonardo da Vinci

The only time my wife ever liked football

“I think there’s something off with my vision.” I said absently to my wife, Alyssa, keeping my eyes on the football game playing on t.v.

“Really, off how?” Alyssa said from the other room, disinterested in what I was doing. She doesn’t like football, doesn’t get it, thinks it is violent, ridiculous, and stupid. We live in San Francisco, but were raised in the Pacific Northwest, just outside of Seattle. So I watch the Seahawks games.

“Like when the quarterback throws the ball from the right side of the t.v. screen to the receiver on the left side. I can’t track it. I lose it.”

“Huh. Really? How bad?”

“I dunno, not that bad, but its weird.”

That’s basically how it started. San Francisco, Late November 2016, on a Friday just after Thanksgiving, watching the Seattle Seahawks on t.v. I can’t even remember what team they were playing, or if they won or lost. In hindsight, something had already been going on; I had already been asking Alyssa if she wanted to drive when we went places for at least two weeks. That was unusual for me. I tended to want to be the driver, but lately hadn’t felt like it, though I hadn’t thought much of it. A day after the Seahawks game, we went to a friends post-thanksgiving Oyster Feed party. I felt a little off balance around all those people, like I was constantly on the verge of bumping into someone. They seemed to swirl around me in an unpredictable and unsettling way. My solution at the time was to drink more wine. I think my rationale was that if I was a little tipsy, even drunk, feeling perceptually off would be normal, explainable. Odd the way we deal with things sometimes isn’t it?

Over the next few days I played with testing my vision, putting my fingers out to my sides and bringing them back to the center in front of my face, then back out to the sides. Nothing too pronounced or obvious; it wasn’t like I had some big black spot, but still, something just seemed off.

“I’m fucking going blind.” I said off-handedly.”



“Oh stop it. You are not going blind.” Alyssa replied.”

“What if I am?” One thing I should get out in the open right now: I am paranoid I’m going to get cancer, or die from some sinister disease. I’ve been this way since I was 10 years old when my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. My child’s way of coping was to take her sickness on myself. “If she has it, I must have it too,” was my thinking. It was a child-like, immature expression of sympathy. Though I’ve matured (arguable), the fear has always stuck around. This is why I avoid going to the doctor. I’m terrified they’ll tell me I have cancer. So instead, like a moron, I sit and stew, and worry and fret about it. Alyssa knows this about me; She’s the one person I actually express my fear to.

“I’ve been wanting to make an appointment for you with the optometrist anyways. The guy I got my glasses from.” He’s cool. You’ll like him…you’re not going blind.”

The next day was Monday. I continued my amateur visual field self-testing. Things had gotten worse. I was sure of it. I texted Alyssa that I was certain I had a blind spot in my left periphery field of vision. She texted me back the optometrist’s contact info and told me to make an appointment.

The Optometrist

I made an appointment that same Monday and went. I told the optometrist my deal and he checked my eyes and did a visual field test.

“You definitely have an area in your left visual field where you are not able to see. Your eyes are perfect though, they look beautiful, 20-20 vision. But what that means is this is not in your eyes. Its in your brain.” He paused, “Pretty serious, yeah?”

“OK.” Was all I could come up with.

“Do you have a primary care doctor? I’d like to call him now, if its alright with you.”

“Yeah.” But I couldn’t think, couldn’t remember my doctor’s name. The Optometrist stepped out for a minute. The terror set it in. “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit. oh shit. oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.” That’s about all that was going through my head, that’s all I got for you. My next move was to attempt to text Alyssa, but I stopped myself, trying to prioritize. “Figure out who your doctor is shit-head.” I ordered myself.

In the end, I figured it out and we got ahold of my primary care doc. I sat there quietly as the optometrist told my doctor,

“John is presenting with a left hemianopsia…yes, yes, I agree.”

The optometrist provided some more details, listened, agreed with something again, and hung up.

“Your doctor wants you to go to the Emergency Room now. He is calling them to tell them to expect you. Do you know where it is? You can walk. It is right up the street and over one block.”

Now begins the dark comedy. Because I didn’t know where it was, but for some reason said I did, then asked for directions, before telling the optometrist, “I got this.” Stepping out the door onto the sidewalk, half blind to anything on my left, eyes dilated from the exam. I couldn’t see shit. Well that’s not entirely true, I could sort of see, but it was kind of like in the movies from the seventies, when the bad guy boxer manages to rub something into the good guy boxer’s eyes. Then the camera starts zooming in and out real fast, trying to give the audience the experience the blinded boxer is having. It’s all bright lights and faces rushing in and out towards you too fast, accompanied by some blaring high pitched instrument and far off muffled voices trying to yell something at you. Walking up the sidewalk, I had to laugh at the absurdity of my situation. I actually did start to laugh out loud. It really is odd sometimes the way we cope with things. I continued on in the direction I was pretty sure I needed to go. Somewhere back at the optometrists office, before leaving, I had managed to text Alyssa that I had been told to go to the ER. She had responded that she was on her way. That everything would be ok. Meeting her became my primary motivation, even though I knew she couldn’t actually fix this, I just wanted to be with her. I imagined telling her about the absurdity of my blind ass trying to walk to the ER. I couldn’t wait to tell her.

I found what I was pretty sure was the hospital and walked entirely around the building, trying to find the entrance, at least once. Due to the eye dilation, I couldn’t read signs, couldn’t make out the letters. At some point I entered this building. I asked a blurry guy wearing what had to be blue scrubs, how to get to the ER. He took great care explaining it to me. I rode the elevator down like he had said and walked in the direction he said. Eventually I found myself in a garage that had several ambulances. Figuring I was getting warmer, I wandered around, found a woman in those dark blue outfits EMTs wear, and told her I needed to get to the ER. She ushered me through a door and into the ER where a woman behind a desk asked me what I needed.

“My name is John. My doctor told me to come here right away because he is worried my brain is going to explode. He said he was going to call ahead, that you’d be expecting me.”