My Ongoing Brush with Blindness - An Eye-opening Experience? I’d Say

My fly-fishing buddy Wade sent me an email several months back. He was wondering why I haven’t made a blog post since September. Yes, September.

“I haven’t seen an update on your blog in quite some time,” he wrote. “You must have had a few things to write about after a fall of chasing ducks around?”

Two weeks ago Wade sent me another email, asking me if I wanted to take a trip to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Ely, Minnesota, where in year’s past we’ve canoed and camped and, most importantly, fly-fished for smallmouth bass, those freshwater street fighters of the piscatorial world.

I’ve been remiss in not returning Wade’s emails, and I’ve been remiss in not responding to some of the many dispatches—emails, letters, phone calls—that I’ve received over the last several months from readers wondering why I fell off the grid.

In the last eight months, I’ve had four surgeries to repair a detached retina in my left eye. Forgive me for playing the sympathy card, but this entire ordeal has been as pleasant as gargling a cocktail of battery acid and antifreeze.

It started innocently enough: I was hunting doves with Buddy the Black Lab (see last post) when I started to see black dots, commonly called floaters in the eye-repair business, in my left eye. I didn’t think much of it, but common sense told me to get it checked out, which I did. An optometrist told me that floaters are common and would probably move in and out of my vision for the rest of my life. Not to worry, though, he said. You should be fine. A week later I woke up and could barely see out of my left eye. Either a mighty glacier-sized floater was blocking my vision or something else had gone terribly wrong.

The upshot: My retina had a severe tear that required surgery, and immediately. I remember glibly telling my retina specialist/surgeon, whom I had just met, that I had to be “fixed” before my duck-hunting trip to South Dakota.

He looked at me like I needed psychiatric care, too. “You don’t understand,” he said. “This is very, very serious. You won’t be making the trip.” That’s when I got scared. That’s I felt true panic for the first time in many, many years.

It’s odd how efficiently certain traumatic events cut through the BS and remake your priorities. I love duck hunting; I love it as much as anyone. But in that moment, hearing my doctor’s words, I, mentally, put duck hunting into a little box and shut the lid, and I haven’t opened it since.

I wish I could say my eight-month-and-counting ordeal was in nearing its end game. But it isn’t. I’ve had three more surgeries (long story, to be sure) and I’m still not sure what the future holds, and perhaps that’s the scariest thing of all.

Sight? I hope I can recapture some of it in my eye left. I pray for it. And I know others are too. Like my good buddy Wade, with whom I hope to fly-fish once again real soon.