After brain surgery, the world didn’t look quite right.
Something about my vision was peculiar. No matter how hard my eyes searched my surroundings, something was off. I couldn’t describe the distortion – it was harder to read, movies were harder to follow, and all the details of the world around me didn’t quite fit together the way they should. It gave me vertigo. It was off-putting, disorienting. I hoped the eerie visual effect, whatever it was, would pass. It’s probably the drugs or brain swelling. Be patient.
Then I figured out what’s wrong: I have a blind spot.
Specifically, I have superior quadrantanopia. Imagine that your visual field, a rectangle, is divided into four quarters. I no longer have the upper left quarter. The entire upper left quadrant of my vision is gone. It’s a common result of damage to the temporal lobe.
The world doesn’t look right because I’m partially blind.
I don’t know if the part of my brain that processes the missing part of my vision is damaged or removed entirely. I’ll ask my neurosurgeon for curiosity’s sake. We’ll make an appointment with a neuro-opthamologist, who will determine the extent of the blindness and tell me if there’s anything we can do. If there’s anything I can do.
The literature suggests that rehabilitation isn’t possible.
But the brain is a miraculously adaptable organ; maybe, even if no one has done it before, maybe I can train my brain to see again. It’s not about what’s likely, it’s about what’s possible; it’s not about denial, it’s about hope.
Today marks two weeks since the operating table. Sitting in the kitchen last night, I told my mother about my blindness. I told her the news matter-of-factly, almost meditatively, as though I were describing some interesting discovery and not a handicap. She listened. There were no histrionics on either of our parts. Carry on. At one point I smirked. “It’s kind of cool,” I said, waving my left hand to my upper left, wiggling the fingers. “I don’t see it there. It’s like I have a ghost arm.” At another point, I growled, “Pisses me off. It makes it harder to read, and I want to take courses this fall semester.” She sympathized, made cocoa, and we smiled at each other.
We accept the challenge I’ve been given. We keep hope. We make cocoa and carry on. We don’t have to be blinded by our blind spots.
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