As a child I suffered from itchy, irritated eyes and rubbed them constantly, which led to reoccurring eye infections like sties.
You know, those small, horrid, painful lump on the inside or outside of the eyelid.
Most people have one or two of them a year, but I seemed to have them every other month.
That was a horrible time for me. It was embarrassing. I didn't want to go to school and it was also very painful. But I wasn't taken to the doctor for that - as was common in the Caribbean in those days, I was treated with herbal medicines.
Basically, my grandmother or my mother warmed a pepper leaf against the lamplight, plastered the pepper leaf with Vicks Vapour Rub and applied the cure-all to my eye.
Then, when I was 9 years old, I also started having terrible headaches. When one headache lasted for three days, my mother decided to take me to an optometrist, assuming I might need spectacles and that eye strain might be causing the headaches.
But back in the 70’s there still wasn’t a permanent eye care professional on my island, so an optometrist flew in about twice a year, providing eye exams from her hotel room. My mother happened to be a waitress at the Buccaneers Inn hotel where the optometrist often stayed, so she took me to see her on her next visit.
I had to wait hours to be seen, but I was intrigued about what would happen inside that room. The room was dimly lit and the soft-spoken, blonde optometrist introduced to be to that famous eye chart. Then, she diagnosed me as being near-sighted and promised to send me some spectacles in the coming months.
I was excited to get my new spectacles at first. But the eye infections and headaches continued and when I started being bullied at school and called “Four Eyes”,
I became discouraged and stopped wearing my spectacles.
I don’t recall getting another eye exam until I was about 15 years old.
By then, my vision had worsened and I was prescribed thicker spectacles for near-sightedness - which of course I never wore.
Because I was 15 and those huge, black-rimmed spectacles were too unattractive.
And because I didn't feel that they helped my vision.
Unbeknownst to me, I had been misdiagnosed. I was slowly losing my sight. Poor vision had become my norm. In fact, I had become so accustomed to poor vision, I did not realize my devastating situation until my vision was horribly impaired.
That happened one day in 1998.
You know, those small, horrid, painful lump on the inside or outside of the eyelid.
Most people have one or two of them a year, but I seemed to have them every other month.
That was a horrible time for me. It was embarrassing. I didn't want to go to school and it was also very painful. But I wasn't taken to the doctor for that - as was common in the Caribbean in those days, I was treated with herbal medicines.
Basically, my grandmother or my mother warmed a pepper leaf against the lamplight, plastered the pepper leaf with Vicks Vapour Rub and applied the cure-all to my eye.
Then, when I was 9 years old, I also started having terrible headaches. When one headache lasted for three days, my mother decided to take me to an optometrist, assuming I might need spectacles and that eye strain might be causing the headaches.
But back in the 70’s there still wasn’t a permanent eye care professional on my island, so an optometrist flew in about twice a year, providing eye exams from her hotel room. My mother happened to be a waitress at the Buccaneers Inn hotel where the optometrist often stayed, so she took me to see her on her next visit.
I had to wait hours to be seen, but I was intrigued about what would happen inside that room. The room was dimly lit and the soft-spoken, blonde optometrist introduced to be to that famous eye chart. Then, she diagnosed me as being near-sighted and promised to send me some spectacles in the coming months.
I was excited to get my new spectacles at first. But the eye infections and headaches continued and when I started being bullied at school and called “Four Eyes”,
I became discouraged and stopped wearing my spectacles.
I don’t recall getting another eye exam until I was about 15 years old.
By then, my vision had worsened and I was prescribed thicker spectacles for near-sightedness - which of course I never wore.
Because I was 15 and those huge, black-rimmed spectacles were too unattractive.
And because I didn't feel that they helped my vision.
Unbeknownst to me, I had been misdiagnosed. I was slowly losing my sight. Poor vision had become my norm. In fact, I had become so accustomed to poor vision, I did not realize my devastating situation until my vision was horribly impaired.
That happened one day in 1998.
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