These days I enjoy lying in bed more than ever. From that vantage point without my glasses, things in the room look pretty close to how they would if I could see clearly. It's the closest I'll ever get to normalcy again. I can even pretend for a little while that this waking nightmare isn't real. Of course, when I get up and especially when I put my glasses on, the illusion shatters. Talk about disincentives.
In return for being legally blind (the cutoff is a measly 20/125 compared to my 20/500), I get some kind of tax break and a 50-60% discount on public transit, plus eventually a snazzy
white cane that will among other things supposedly garner me much sympathy and goodwill from passersby. Somehow none of that is terribly consoling, though.
Batts/-Joshua-: As for my being able to adapt to my uh new life circumstances, the answer is "presumably", given that
N other people have for some
N > 0 and I could then be the
(N+1)st. I'm getting some support to this end starting this week with an appointment at the California Department of Rehabilitation. There are of course various hurdles that would need to be overcome, most notably
I don't want to live like this!
I finally started using OS X's text-to-speech for reading online articles. I avoided it for a long time because doing so would amount to a tacit acknowledgement that I effectively can't read any text longer than a few sentences.
Meanwhile on the clinical side, the test for Leber's came out negative, which apparently doesn't mean a whole lot because the test has a significant rate of false negatives. It's a
sufficient test but not a necessary one. The doc said that up to half of all patients with symptoms resembling LHON get a negative on the test. I seriously paid $1,500 for
this?
The test looks for the best known and most common genetic defects that lead to the disease. Prognosis depends on which defect is the culprit. However, if the disease is caused by an undocumented defect, then presumably the doctor cannot tell me anything with any amount of confidence about the prognosis. I'll have no idea whether, let alone when or to what extent, it might improve or worseb.
Awesome!! 
More tests of various sorts later this week, no idea what for though. I've now lost count of how many intensely bright lights have been shined in my eyes and needles stuck in my arm. Good thing I got over my fear of needles a long time ago amirite
I'd like to cling on to the shred of hope that this is all a temporary condition but it's surely just wishful thinking.
In unrelated news, I'm trying to apply the basic principle that you should not be Facebook friends with people you do not actually like. Too lazy to defriend all the people I don't know or care about, though. The only reason I still use it at all is for some groups I'm in that use it exclusively.
