Vision Loss

Maybe I’m a little old school – not so much in the Scott-Baio-will-always-be-cool way, and not even in the My Adidas-is-the-best-song-ever way. I’m a throwback disciple in the sense that, in spite of the liberating convenience of LASIK, PRK, and other types of corrective-lens-killing procedures, I think glasses are still pretty hot.

Now, I understand that a lot of people might think that glasses are vision-correcting killjoys. They break, they get lost, they’re uncomfortable, they impede participation in spontaneous rugby matches, they’re emotionally needy, and they don’t get along with your parents (whoops, those last two are for my diary). Reasonable annoyances, and reasonable motivations to opt for vision correcting surgeries. But hey, these aren’t reasons to condemn glasses as relics of the pre-laser in your eye past.

People often forget that glasses don’t just help you see better – they act as symbols of sophistication, intellect, and an understated, smoldering hotness. Would you have had a major crush on the county librarian during fourth-grade if not for her glasses? I thought so.

Some celebrities derive their aesthetic identity (and aforementioned smoldering hotness) from their glasses. Tina Fey is worshipped by snarky men and women who recognize not only her wit, but her wicked-good looks. Ira Glass (sounds suspiciously like “eyeglass”) can put Abercrombie models to shame while recording their stories of feeling physically and intellectually inferior to him for This American Life. Would Lisa Loeb have Stayed in the spotlight so long without her cat-eyed glasses? And those who (creepily) lust for the still-adolescent body of Harry Potter would readily admit that without those spectacles, HP wouldn’t look any better than the Muggle next door.

Face it – glasses aren’t all that bad. They’re still effective, they come in countless varieties, and, at worst, they make you look smarter and sexier. So smart and sexy, in fact, that I feel like reading books. Smart books.

I wonder if Ms. Heinrichs still works at the library…

It’s better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick

She quickly turns to face her companion, hair swinging seductively, the two crystals dangling from her eyes swaying like two enormous tear drops suspended in time. Is this a scene from the latest sci-fi movie? A lost episode of Star Trek, perhaps? I’m afraid not. This is eye jewelry, and it’s the latest in almighty Fashion’s fetish for the weird and the wonderful.

Finally, those who shy away from the thought of tattooing those baby blues (or blacks, or browns) and cringe at the possibility of embedding stylish shards of metal in those limpid pools of green can participate in the eye-modification craze (crazy?) that is sweeping the industrialized world. One of Amsterdam designer Eric Willem Klarenbeek’s latest projects, eye jewelry consists of shiny baubles dangling from threads attached to the wearer’s contact lenses. Apparently, you haven’t reached the pinnacle of fashion until you’ve experienced swinging a crystal pendulum from your eye.

Yet, perhaps Mr. Klarenbeek is trying to make a statement other than one of fashion. Perhaps he is commenting on the haute monde’s tendency toward one-up-manship – toward fashion’s predilection for excess, its penchant for making life as uncomfortable as possible for the wearer. Here I’m reminded of the infamous Marie Antoinette’s convoluted coif, which took hours to construct and a king’s ransom in padding, pomade and ornamentation. Her most famous style featured a model of the “Belle Poule,” a French naval vessel, ensconced in her towering tresses.

If eye jewelry is Klarenbeek’s honest attempt at a fashion milestone, however, I’ve only one thing to say to the fashion forward: with a nod to France’s most infamous queen, Let them use eye drops!

From the schmaltzy tone of the title, I’m sure you can tell that this will be one schmaltzy piece of writing.

For those of us who love to take risks, there’s nothing better than free-falling. I’m not talking about the schmaltzy Tom Petty jingle from the early 90’s, either. I’m talking about that heart-in-your-throat, brain-scrambling, stomach-doing-somersaults feeling you get when you either intentionally or unintentionally hurl yourself from a distance of greater than about 30 feet to the ground.

We’ve all taken that phantom step in the dark while walking up or down the stairs before. You know, the one where you either think that there’s another step to take when there isn’t or that there isn’t another step when there actually is one (the second of these examples being the more potentially disastrous). Think of that split-second of panic when your mind realizes that you’ve misstepped and gets ready for the searing pain that is certain to follow. Take that feeling, stretch it out over 15 seconds or so, and you can begin to ascertain what it feels like to bungee jump. There is no greater rush than to trick your mind into thinking that it is about to get smashed into a million pieces. Some people say that it is the closest feeling to being born that humans will ever attain (OK, I made that part up, but you know what I’m talking about).

Consider me a wrung-out-rag when I learned today that bungee jumping (and indeed every activity that has a violent jerking motion associated with it) can lead to visual impairment. The New England Journal of Medicine reported in its latest issue that a 24-year-old woman in seemingly impeccable health partially lost vision in one of her eyes due to a “pool of blood, or a blood blister, [that] formed at the back of her left eye as a result of the abrupt jerking stop.” I guess the “bungee” part of bungee jumping caused something back there to rupture and eventually caused her vision to decline from 20/20 to 20/25 (after surgery). So now you know the risks and rewards of bungee jumping. It’s all fun and games until your eye gets jerked out.

Remember back when lip rings, tongue piercings, and navel jewelry were considered strange? Well, now people have taken extreme body modification to an entirely new level. Forget the JewelEye. The last place on the body you would have ever thought could be tattooed has gotten inked.

I guess humans can make anything possible, even getting tattoos on the eyes. And I’m not talking about eyelid tattooing either, but actual tattoos on the eyeballs.

Apparently, cosmetic corneal tattooing has been used since the late 19th century to mask scars and other defects. But somehow the medical procedure has become an elective one, and has migrated from the cornea to the sclera (the white part of the eye).

Some ink addicts are eyeing it as a potential new trend, despite major risks for infection, loss of sight, loss of eyeballs, etc. In fact, three very brave (and maybe soon to be blind) “mice” decided to test it out. Pauly Unstoppable, Shannon Larratt, and Josh decided to willingly get stabbed in their eyes multiple times in an attempt to turn their whites an electric blue.

The result— major bruising and discomfort, and some blisters between the sclera and conjunctiva. But hey, at least they accomplished their goal…

If this actually sounds appealing to you, just remember that trends come and go; so it would be wise to “think before eye ink.”

Not to mention that 17 percent of an estimated 45 million Americans who got inked in normal places (a.k.a. “their skin”) now have tattoo remorse, according to a 2004 Harris Poll. Many of them opt for expensive, painful, and time consuming tattoo removal. But eyeball tats will pretty much leave you marked for life.

Which leaves me wondering— what will these blue-eyed idiots do when they start regretting their moronic experiment?

The lights are low, the music smoky; you catch her piercing gaze from across the bar. As she saunters over, eyes locked to yours, you wrack you brain for the perfect opening line. But before you can find the right words, an odd metallic gleam catches your attention.

“Is there…something in your eye?”
“Oh, it’s my JewelEye,” she croons, blinking a few times for emphasis.
Thinking she may have had a few too many stiff ones, you ask her to repeat.
“Jewel-Eye,” she giggles. “It’s Dutch.”

This does little to explain what looks like a piece of heart-shaped shrapnel lodged in her ocular conjunctiva. But you buy her a drink, all the while wondering what those crazy Europeans will think of next.

Welcome to the future of body modification, where tattoos, septum rings, and 3-inch plugs are no longer enough to stand out in a crowd. Yes, in the true spirit of innovation, today’s young and restless have found an even more cringe-inducing way to shock the parents. The JewelEye, a small platinum implant that is placed under a thin membrane in the white of the eye, was developed by a surgeon at the Netherlands Institute for Innovative Ocular Surgery (NIIOS) back in 2002. Never to be outdone by their Continental counterparts, Los Angeles residents soon flocked to a local ophthalmologist who offered extraocular implants, Dr. Robert Maloney. While other ophthalmologists have dismissed the procedure as dangerous and unnecessarily invasive, Maloney maintains that the JewelEye is not only safe, but also “really exciting and interesting and beautiful and a little bit edgy.”

But if Maloney’s bubbling recommendation hasn’t sold you, you may be swayed the NIIOS website. “It is of all times for people to wear jewelry,” it cryptically insists, making you wonder if the JewelEye isn’t, in fact, the mod of the new Millennium.

But whether the fad will stick or fade like so much Crystal Pepsi has yet to be seen. And in the meantime, you may want to stick to something tried and true, like a puncture to the ol’ nasal cartilage. Ah, those were the days…

Parents: after you read the following, pick your jaw off the ground quickly. You don’t want to get it stuck that way, do you? And so goes the logic of this myth…

Kids are easily amused. No, I’m not kidding. There was a time in life when simply trying to focus on a freckle at the end of my nose would keep me entertained for a surprisingly long time – at least until my eyes got tired and my head started to hurt. The unfortunate side of this coin is that adults are easily annoyed – especially by those things that kids tend to find amusing. So, sooner or later, some grown-up person in my family would lose patience and snap, “Stop crossing your eyes like that or they’ll get stuck that way!”

Now among vision myths, this one is higher than most on the absurdity scale. Furthermore, its effect is, as often as not, the opposite of the adult’s intention, which is to convince the kid to stop crossing their eyes. I know more than one person who, as a child, responded to the threat with something along the lines of, “Really? Cool!” before proceeding to actually try to get their eyes stuck out of alignment.

Furthermore, there is a vaguely harmful element to this particular myth. Strabismus, the medical condition that causes the eyes to be out of synch with each other, is not acquired. Children who have it are born with it. However, imagine a child who has been afflicted with this condition constantly being told by other children, “Gee, you shouldn’t have crossed your eyes so much. My mom says that’s how they get stuck that way.”

So if your kid is amused by crossing his eyes on purpose, let him do it. It’ll eventually cause a headache – perhaps for you as well as him – but it won’t do any damage. It’s also better than him embarrassing himself – and you – the next time he meets someone with an actual visual problem.

Corey Hart, the Federation, and E40, all wear sunglasses at night. Now young club-hoppers and trendsetters everywhere are mimicking their style, sporting clunky designer sunglasses both indoors and at night, in a shameless attempt to look cool.

I guess sunglasses aren’t what they used to be. Gone are the days when their main function was to hide the eyes from the sun’s harmful rays. Now they apparently protect your eyes from moon-rays too.

While hitting the club scene last weekend, I came across a peculiar sight. As I made my way to the dance floor, I saw huddled in a dark corner a group of fashionably-clad gentlemen with brewed drinks in hand— conspicuously sporting sunglasses, as if they just stepped out of a James Bond flick.

Sunglasses? At night? Isn’t it dark in here, or is it just me?

It seemed my drink wasn’t playing tricks on me. So I wondered: what is the point of wearing shades in a club where it’s so dark you can barely tell who (or what) you are dancing with? The green and blue flashing lights must have been blinding. Or maybe they thought they were just too cool to be seen. To me, they looked like idiots wearing sunglasses when there really was no reason to.

Sure, society has accepted some people for their habitual “glamourflage” capabilities. Tom Cruise (before he was jumping on couches) made Wayfarers look good. Angelina Jolie and Heidi Klum look sexy in their Aviators. Bono rocks his signature pair of Armani’s; which according to the rockstar, make him look not-so-ordinary.

But just because a celebrity or two can pull off such a pretentious and purposeless look (or just because a new song makes the fashion faux pas sound cool) doesn’t mean it looks good on everyone. So to avoid looking stupid, just stick to wearing shades in the sun only.

Parents – There is far more to fear from WHAT your children watch on television than WHERE they sit when they watch it.

I like to sit on the floor. It’s just a personal preference, but I find that a nice, soft carpet and a couple of squishy pillows offer much more in the way of comfortable reclining possibilities than your average sofa. As a child, however, as soon as I would find just the perfect comfortable position on the living room floor, I would invariably receive the following admonishment:

“You’re too close to the TV! If you sit there, you’ll ruin your eyes. Get up and go sit on the couch!”

Grumpily, I would relinquish my chosen spot, knowing full well that an argument would surely result in my not being allowed to watch anything at all, from any distance. But I could not help but ponder whether sitting too close to the TV would actually damage my vision, or if this was just another load of parental hooey.

Turns out, it was the latter. Despite the sureness with which overzealous mothers assert this “wisdom,” there is no evidence whatsoever to support the claim that viewing a television (or any other screen) up close has any effect at all on eyesight.

Poor eyesight is, in almost all cases, a genetic trait. Sitting up close to a television set won’t cause a child to develop nearsightedness, farsightedness, or any similar condition, any more than sitting well away from the set will prevent them from needing glasses if they are genetically predisposed to vision problems.

Watching certain types of programming, however, WILL result in a skewed sense of reality and diminished general intelligence. So stop worrying about where your kids sit and start paying attention to what the heck they’re watching.

Finally able to spot the proverbial carving knife, mice who once suffered from a form of hereditary blindness are now free to taunt the Farmer’s Wife at will.

Scientists at the University of Florida have successfully restored the vision of mice affected by achromatopsia, a form of hereditary visual impairment the results in complete color blindness and nearly non-existent central vision. By injecting the mice with a harmless virus, the scientists were able to deliver corrective genes to the mice’s cone photoreceptor cells, which define whether or not someone is blind.

“Initially I was skeptical,” says Marty McMouse, who traveled all the way his home in East Sussex to participate in the study. “I mean, the idea of being injected with a so-called ‘harmless’ virus was a little new-fangled for this country mouse.”

But when Marty was able to locate his water feeder for the first time in his life without assistance, he knew he’d made the right choice.

After two months of gene therapy, McMouse and his fellow participants experienced exceptional results. Of the 21 treated eyes, 19 responded positively to the treatment, 17 of which had vision comparable to that of normal mice. The study showed that gene therapy can be used to target cone cells and effectively restore their function. UF’s researchers believe that this approach will soon be able to be used to correct vision problems in people.

“Sure, this study has positive implications for humans,” McMouse concedes, “but as a descendant of a long line of visually challenged mice so long stigmatized by the famous nursery rhyme, I find this discovery empowering in and of itself.”

Indeed, formerly blind mice can now hold their heads high and proclaim, “Why yes, I have seen such a thing in my life!”

Whether by accidental stabbing or by pure fate, these historical icons – real and fictional – have carved themselves a permanent place in traditional and pop culture.

Stevie Wonder – 34 Top Ten hits, 22 Grammys, five words (”Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I’m Yours”). The most popular and possible explanation for his blindness is the excessive amount of oxygen that was pumped into his incubator as a premature infant, which led to retinoplasty of prematurity.

Louis Braille - A bit of an obvious choice, but the way the namesake of the “language of the blind” lost his sight is pretty gruesome. As a child, he poked himself in the eye with a sharp tool used to poke holes in leather; his eyes became infected and blindness ensued. However, he ended up creating the system of communication for millions of blind people. He even had an asteroid named after him.

Portrait of Louis Braille

Geordi LaForge was born blind, but his high-tech VISOR (Visual Instrument and Sensory Organ Replacement) provides a sense of sight. Rumor has it that, in addition to a knack for spaceship engineering, he’s also a huge fan of children’s books.

Cupid – Often depicted as blind or blindfolded, this cherubic deity’s lack of sight purportedly translates to blindness to a lover’s faults. It also explains the Liza Minelli – David Gest fiasco.