Raising a child with
visual impairment makes you see the world differently.
At dinner with friends the
other evening, I was astonished to see Asa’s best friend Angèle, who’s just a
couple of months older than he is, watching TV from across the room.
What’s so strange about
that?
Well, for Asa to see what
was on the screen, he would have to stand within arm’s reach of the television
set.
That had come to seem
normal to me.
That may sound weird. But
consider some of the other characteristics that we accept as natural for
toddlers: short stature, primitive grammar, a predilection for tantrums. And
their special, compensating features -- a mania for play; an exuberance that’s
almost never found in adults.
The fact is, I’d gotten
used to Asa not seeing as we do
-- just like I’ve gotten used to him being smaller and livelier and having
chubbier cheeks. And sometimes I forget that other children don’t necessarily
share all of these traits.
The normalization of
abnormality is part of a process of psychological adaptation.
Indeed, something like
this must be going on for Asa himself.
If the scales were to fall
away from his eyes tomorrow, he’d probably be very disoriented. The world would
look strange and dazzling.
Like the people in Plato’scave, he’d probably prefer to keep the shades on.
For now, leaving the cave
isn’t an option anyway.
What we’re trying to do
instead is make little steps towards the light.
Bifocals
How are we going about
that?
The latest thing we’re
trying is bifocals.
Aren't
those for old people? you may ask.
Usually,
yes. But then again, so are cataracts.
In
Asa's case, a cataract (a side-effect either of his cancer or the chemotherapy
he’s received) effectively blinded him in his left eye until it was operated on
in September.
In
the cataract operation, the surgeon removed the natural lens of the left eye,
which had become opaque.
This
all seems to have worked out pretty well. But as a consequence he's left -- at
least for the time being -- with quite poor vision in this lens-less left eye.
For
the past few months, we've been patching his good eye periodically, to give the
left eye practice -- or more precisely, to give his brain practice at dealing with input from it.
And
to help the brain along, we’ve been fitting him out with spectacles with a very strong lens on the left side, to
compensate for the short-sightedness.
The
new bifocals will provide some close-up magnification as well, which may help
him with some of his hobbies: writing, painting, and, um, watching The
Tellytubbies on his mum’s phone.
Perhaps
we should get him a pipe and tweed jacket to go with those bifocals.
