Cyclops Is Better Than You

Trigger warning: Lots of gross eyeball stuff in here. No pictures, because that would just be nasty, but if you’re squeamish about your eyes, run away now.

I stole this title from a thread on the Brian Michael Bendis message board. The thread explains in painstaking detail why Scott Summers is the leader of the X-Men, and why he is better than everybody else. It makes me laugh, and like as not, nothing else in this blog will.

Where to start?

I’ve been Type II diabetic for about 12 years. Most of that time, I have taken pretty lousy care of myself. It’s controlled through medication, which I try to stay pretty religious with, and diet and exercise, which I usually don’t.

Last year was an especially bad year in terms of keeping up with everything. I fell down on the job of taking care of myself. That’s basically it. I have no excuse, I have no explanation. I just stopped taking my medications as regularly as I am supposed to. And I let my weight get thoroughly out of control. Last spring, I started noticing some problems in my vision. I assumed I needed new glasses, and went to an optometrist, who pronounced my current pair of glasses woefully inadequate, and gave me a new prescription. He also assured me that my vision problems were in no way related to diabetic damage. Which is the same thing I had been told for the previous ten years. No damage. No problem. No worries.

Now we flash forward to October. I make my commute into work, and after about an hour at my desk, realize that everything in my left eye is blurry. I called Jenny, who immediately went into “taking care of the guy who doesn’t take care of himself” mode. I bagged out of work early, and Jenny took me to the Yale Eye Center, where a team of wonderful doctors did a series of tests and pronounced that I had proliferative diabetic retinopathy. In lay terms, it means that I have abnormal blood vessel growth in my eyes. The new vessels are fragile, and hemorrhage, causing, among other things, scarring inside the eye. There’s a lot more science to it than that, but basically, that’s the gist of it.

After I received the diagnosis, we immediately started treatment. The first step in treatment was an injection directly into my left eye (the more damaged eye). I can categorically tell you that having a needle shoved into my eye was the absolute worst thing I have ever gone through in my life. I passed out almost immediately. Poor Jenny was holding my hands at the time, and thought I had a stroke.

For the next two months, I would be going into YEC once per week, and receiving laser surgeries in my eyes. The way this works is that they cover my eye with a cold, slimy jelly. Then they put a special lens on the eye and then start firing bursts of lasers to burn out the tiny bleeding vessels. I have a hard time describing the sensation, because it is so uniquely painful. Try to imagine someone has heated up a soup spoon to scalding temperatures. They have managed to slip this spoon behind your eyeball. Then they spend 20 minutes or so poking your eye with a pin, shoving it into the super-heated spoon. That’s basically it. I take pain killers and anti-anxiety meds before the appointment. They don’t kill the pain at all, but they allow me to sort of disconnect from it. Then I usually go home and pass out for three or four hours. Two months of this, and then they pronounced me in good shape just before Christmas.

In March I had a follow-up appointment, where they determined the bleeding was still going on, and another two months of laser began. To date, I have had 15,000 lasers to the left eye, and 12,500 to the right. The scarring in my left eye is essentially inoperable. The doctor has said that he cannot remove the scarring entirely, and I will likely never regain full vision in that eye. However, the scarring has gotten worse since we started treatment, and is continuing to pull at the retina, threatening to detach it fully.

Which brings us to this week. Wednesday I had another injection in the left eye. This time I did NOT pass out, although I lost about two days of sleep in advance worrying about it. In a week, I go in for surgery where the doctor will attempt to sever either end of the scarring in my retina, reducing tension, and helping the retina to lay flatter. Again, I will not be regaining much. Best case scenario has me at about 20/80 vision when all is said and done. I can’t even fathom what that is anymore. I will be spending a week after the surgery lying face down. And I will likely be having more laser in the right eye as soon as I can sit up again.

I have been trying to be upbeat throughout this process. Trying to keep a stiff upper lip, and not feel too sorry for myself. Jenny has gotten the worst of it, as wives often do. She has seen me at my worst, and I haven’t been able to really keep myself from fully succumbing to despair around her. She has been a champion throughout this all, though, and has shown me more love and patience than I thought humanly possible. Her father has also been a huge help, chauffeuring me back and forth to surgery appointments so that Jenny hasn’t missed any more work than absolutely necessary.

I keep telling myself that this is NOT the worst thing that has ever happened to anyone. I still have my right eye, and although I have limitations to what I can do, I am still able to do most everything I want to. It’s just the fear that keeps getting me. The fear that I am going to lose my sight entirely and what that will mean for me. Especially what that will mean for my passion and my dream, which is to write and work in the comics industry. I’m not sure how you pull that off as a blind man. Jenny has been extremely encouraging, as have several good friends, including Evan Valentine and Jef UK.

If you’ve read this far, I appreciate it. There’s not much point to this, except for getting it out there, and off my chest a bit. If you have diabetes, for god’s sake, take better care of yourself than I have (looking at you, Antonio). I’m not looking for sympathy, but if you have wondered why I have been such an anti-social turd for the past several months, well, now you know.

Okay. Enough of this depressing shit.

STUFF I AM DOING TO AVOID THINKING ABOUT KNIVES GOING IN MY EYEBALLS

• I am replaying Mass Effect 1 and 2, in anticipation of the release of ME3 later this year. I forget how mind-numbingly boring good chunks of ME1 are. Every time I survey a planet and realize I am going to have to take my little dune buggy down there and cruise around looking for minerals, I die a little inside. I am also amazed at how the technology of the future can have things like the Mass Relays, and not be able to create elevators that work. Also, Ashley Williams is a space racist. Fuck her.
• Last time, I mentioned the work of Allan Norico. I should also mention his lady friend Alisa Harris. Alisa does a very cool book called Urban Nomad, about her experiences as an art student in NYC, and another very cool book called Counter Attack, about kitties. She’s also starting a webcomic for and about vegetarians. So check her out. I had the opportunity to meet both Alisa and Allan at this year's MoCCA Fest, and they were both super-cool top-shelf human beings.

Hugs and Kisses,

(The)Travis