Aphakia Adrift

Author: admin

  • I’ve never met others like me!

    Found a Reddit thread where other people with aphakia are chiming in.

  • Driving in the City

    One thing that has dogged me all my teen and adult life is being unable to drive in the city. On paper, my vision is just good enough to drive, but I lack depth perception for maneuvering vehicles in tight spaces like our former horse barn garage. When turning left I can’t tell which lane a car coming is in.

    I didn’t realize how much being able to drive meant to people because nobody would say it to my face. I remember the Family Guy joke about how not being able to drive would have you dying a virgin. A women I was on a date with in my early 20’s was very critical of my not driving, asking, “you seriously don’t drive”.

    So you can guess that I got giddy over the new Cybercab self-driving car you can buy, even if you can’t see well enough to drive. It is a pipe dream of mine at this point, as I don’t have the infrastructure for it, nor has the technology been proven. But it was the first time I had felt hopeful in a long while, seeing 8 Bit Guy being driven by a self-driving Tesla.

  • Representation

    This is what lots of us need, someone with thick glasses who is super successful.

    This is the CEO of Insagram Adam Mosseri. While I don’t think he has aphakia he does have thick glasses (not as thick mine). It is very important for those of us with thick glasses to see success stories because mine have dogged me in the work place since I graduated with a computer science degree in 2002.

    I wish I had seen this years ago so when people are quizzical about my thick glasses I can just say that Adam Mosseri is doing just fine with them because intelligence and curiosity are what are important.

  • Advice Doesn’t Work

    This is insightful, the main takeaway is that good advice works for some people but not others, especially if they are neurodivergent or have deficits about them that don’t attract a partner.

  • How You Look is More Important Than How You See

    The only job I can get is a janitor job because my thick glasses make me look bad. Thing is, I can’t see well enough to perform the job well. My near vision with bifocals is good and my vision 20 feet away is decent because that’s what they test at the eye doctor, but in between is not good. That’s one of the reasons I have a difficult time recognizing faces. This also makes janitorial tasks like actually seeing specks of dirt hard.

    It’s important to note that when you have a disability, you realize there are two distinct tracks of what goes on, sayality and reality. The former posits that one will secure a job that leverages their talents (computer science, in my case). The latter says you get the job that your physical appearance affords. The thing is, nobody wants to admit that sayality is bullshit because that makes them uncomfortable. And if you have never been marginalized you will never encounter this disconnect.

  • the first thing people notice about you
    is the last thing they forget about you

    a lot of a disability’s pain comes from prejudice
    the thorn in the flesh sticks out as it digs in

    conservatives say to get ahead you have to focus on changing yourself
    instead of society
    but no amount of hard work
    no amount of grit
    no amount of character
    no amount of personal responsibility
    is going to surmount the disability based prejudice I receive
    whenever I try to get a job

    those of privilege have all that power
    all the marginalized have
    is their story

    if the worst part about you is your Face
    (like me with my thick glassess)
    then Zoom is going to be Hollywood Squares of hell for you

    BORN: explicit language warning

    I was born blind
    and wear very thick glasses
    which make some people uncomfortable
    as with any disability it’s incumbent upon the person with a disability
    to clear the air about what makes them different
    to make everyone else in the room comfortable
    the story I’d use to put people at ease
    I joined the air force after high school
    and was going to be a fighter pilot
    but it didn’t end up working out
    that’s why, kids, you should never jack off

  • Finding a Job While Visually Impaired

    This cheeky video hits the nail on the head with regard to how difficult it is to find a job as someone visually impaired. I haven’t gotten a job that required an interview in 20 years despite being in tech and being pretty good at what I do.

  • Off My Keyboard, On Their Terms

    People won’t engage me where I’m most powerful, which is in writing. They want to move all communications with me to either over the phone or in real life, where I am the weakest. I’m not alone in this; most people with disabilities are treated worse in real life than online. That’s why those in power are always trying to maximize real-life contact with things like return-to-office mandates because that’s the context where the privileged are the most powerful and we are the least.

  • Is It a Bug or a Floater

    When I see a bug I automatically assume it’s a floater so I switch to my other eye to see if I still see the bug. If I do I know it’s a bug and not a floater. Also floaters move differently than bugs, more of a arc pattern where bugs zigzag more.

  • Airplane, 4/1980

    I was born blind. I had bilateral congenital cataracts. It was the first seriously sad thing that happened to anyone on my mom’s side of the family (the Befuses who are all good Christians). They found this out at three days when they showed a light in my eyes and I didn’t react to it the way a normal newborn would.

    Cataracts are what old people get. However they are much more serious when one gets them at birth because the clock is ticking when one is a baby; every successive month of blindness as an infant means poorer or even no vision as an adult (assuming they can fix it at a later date). This is because the infant brain is making connections like crazy and is learning to see. The eye is just a ateway to the brain, all the heavy lifting is done after the signal gets to the brain. So not giving the brain the opportunity to learn to see when it’s at is highest plasticity is devastating. I was a big baby and that worked in my favor. They could do the surgery at three months instead of six. The first three months of my life I only saw light and darkness.

    Then they did cataract surgery. They had to give me general anesthesia and even had me on a ventilator. The surgery was done at the Eye and Ear Infirmary in downtown Chicago. They said they did the surgery in such a way that when I stopped growing I could get a lens implanted that would give me good enough vision that I wouldn’t need contacts, probably just thin glasses (in early 2001 my eye doctor found out they doctor didn’t actually do it the correct way—he didn’t leave some of the tissue there so a lens could “hang” on it). After surgery they fitted me with very thick glasses (I believe the power was that of a magnifying glass). I saw poorly but did see well enough that I could learn to read when I came of the age to do that.

    I had adventurous parents. Within a few months of the surgery we moved to Tegocigelpa Honduras where my dad was a pastor of the Union Church there (basically a church for ex‐pats and English‐speaking military people). The church paid to have my fly back to the states every six months to get eye checkups. I bring this up because my relationship with the church started off as a positive note even if I wasn’t old enough to know it. Congenital cataracts are a very rare condition; someone on Reddit did an AMA (basically an online interview) on it. I’ve never met someone with the condition though. I know younger people who have it have done better than me (even driving) because obviously technology has improved since 1980 when I was born. They now sometimes give babies contacts (don’t know how that works) and that makes them see better in those crucial infant years.