Blindsided, Part 3: Galactic Floaters and the Dead Zone

“The Dead Zone.” That’s what Doc E called it. The dead zone started 15 some inches from my screen. There the world blurred and then, in the distance, focused. My bobble doll of a head wobbled to focus the dead zone. Meanwhile pinpricks of black holes and a swirl of a galaxy floated into view as my mind idled on space dock rather than blitzing away on warp speed drive.

Perhaps a rational Vulcan had to remind me to release those external inertia dampers and create.

Drives warp? Vulcan, are you talking about a mythical Roman god? External inertia dampers, are they greener auto parts? Folks active in the everyday have little time to dabble in pop culture, nor catch the phrases of creative fiction. Back in the 1960s, great scriptwrighters caught teens' fancies. We faithfully fiddled with TV knobs, flopped on couches, then turned our eyes off reality to fix on galactic explorations of the starship USS Enterprise.

Nostalgia tugged older eyes to STAR TREK, the movie. Would the new actors be able to say the jargon with straight faces? Could they convince me that they were younger versions of characters familiar as family? Over the phone, my eldest son verbalized his thumbs up despite a florescent glow on screen. I itched to go with the rest of the family that opening weekend.

But days before I awoke to black dots and a curl twirling about my left eye. I ran to the bathroom mirror. No stray eyelash. Not makeup bits. I let fear freeze me. God and my beloved got me to call my eye surgeon who said to come in ASAP.

“Floaters,” Doc E confirmed, along with retinal bruising. A hit must have dislodged protein gels, impeding clear sight as they swam in my eyeball. I learned it could take months, maybe a year or two for these floaters to fade away as my brain learns to ignore them. Meanwhile, I use solar shields into the cinema and as I type to you. Funny how sight centers when filtered of temporal glare and flotsam.

So I live, move, perceive shaded and patient, a bit fuzzy on diamond faith! The letters on this Blog's marquee need not change. I’ll still share with y’all the explorations of the every day. And I won’t need Rome’s fire god to get me off my inertia to move at warp drive.
I’m singing:

Savior, he can move the mountains!
Our God is mighty to save! He is mighty to save!
Forever, Author of Salvation!
He rose and conquered the grave!
Jesus conquered the grave!

Blind-sided Recovery, Part One 

Tuesday, April 28, 2009 You mean it’s not May? Boy, am I out of touch. Last week, the bandages came off, one on the left pointer finger, another, a contact over the left eye healing from PRK surgery. If only my eye was healed. Then perhaps I would have seen my digit finger slip behind the car door as it slammed shut. Ouch!

Blindsided I yelled my predicament. My Maria and chauffeur hadn’t pressed the car key’s fob to lock. And she froze. My right hand fought shock to open the door. Out came my finger oozing red where the cuticle met the fingernail.

One reason for the laser surgery was to be rid of the bottle glass lens that my left eye needed to see two inches and beyond. The lens blocked peripheral vision on the left. Angels and family would intervene when I drifted left into people and cars.

An x-ray showed no fracture. The doctor thought I would lose the nail, but I could write once the throbbing and bleeding stopped.

If solutions were only that simple: resume life when the pain stops. Some think we can imagine peace to erase woes that we can channel the inner buddha to end suffering and find compassion. Some have the audacity to hope that charm can finesse an agenda for utopia. 

Others of which I am guilty, escape into diversions that fuel more woes.

So I struggle to finish this piece begun ten days ago. Now it truly is May. Blindsided by the lack of left vision, I stumble in a world of many humanist woes. He who overcomes this world takes my bruised hand to balance them on the keys below QWERTY...