SuperNova Afterglow: End Of Days

The Other Blue Eye

My doctor told me my glaucoma medication would make my eyes appear darker. Some recent photographs brought that evidence home to light.

I've been taking this drug for well over ten years now. Since being post-op to save my eyes (going on thirty years), I've tried all kinds of meds to control the advance of the disease (my family is genetically predisposed). An additional prescription (for one eye only) I've been using for less time. Remarkably, it keeps my right eye blue.

I've listened to my cousins from South Dakota say they don't put stock in eye drops to control intraocular pressure. It doesn't do anything to stop the advance of this disease, according to them. My wife, who works in medicine, told me not to stop.

But, that extra pressure-controlling drop has me wondering: if I put it in my other eye, will it even out the color of my orbs?

I could run it by my doc and wife, but I could also lean toward what my cousins believe. This is vanity talking. I feel sorry for that other, lazy eye. I look in the mirror, it's hard to distinguish. When I look at a digital pic, it's easy to spot an iris turning black with time.

Once, when I ran out of drops, I told my eye specialist I supplemented with the additional drug for my lone eye, until a prescription could be filled. He said I made an appropriate choice, without reservation.

What harm to just cut back on one medication and increase another, making sure I don't run out of either before refill?

Time and these photographs remind me I have more unwanted changes to my appearance coming. However, I think of my mother who suffered through Parkinson's disease.

Her family fell on hard times, back where my cousins are from. Mom had worn shoes that left her feet deformed as a child, curling the balls and toes upward. She and her sisters shared shoes. They had little money for new. When I was her kid, I kept massaging those calcified dogs, promising to work them out until they we're normal again.

What childhood had taught her was the ability to smile with a frown. Parkinson's took away what little muscle she had left to pull up the corners of her mouth, when it was time for family photographs. We worked with her and coached her. She really wanted those pictures to turn out right.

Maybe, it was a hard life she didn't want to be reminded of, seeing images of a bedraggled-looking woman. She had one artificial eye, lost to a staph infection when I was ten. Yet, she had an indomitable spirit that nothing could break.

One day we got it right. We were shooting with film back then, so conserving. A picture of her with her enormous stuffed animal collection came out with a real smile and one wild eye. It was a keeper for mom.

Maybe, it's vanity for me. Maybe, it's reminding me I'm okay, seeing that other blue eye emerge. I could photoshop. I confess, it is difficult to figure out and gave up on the app years ago. It wouldn't hurt to preserve something, if not my vision as I advance into a dark, unknowable future.

Or, I could just recall the indomitable spirit of a woman whose strength taught me to never cry in her presence.