What I see through my left eye
Normal vision (my right eye with contacts/glasses)
If you've known me for a while, then I've probably mentioned to you at some point that I don't have really good night vision, or that I have 'ghost images' when I look only through my left eye. It's always hard to explain what I see to other people, simply because they can't see what I see. So I decided to make a quick attempt at showing everyone what the world looks like to me.
My right eye is a just a little nearsighted, and glasses or contacts take care of that pretty easily. My left eye on the other hand has more complicated problems. There's a slight bulge in my cornea that causes light to focus unevenly in my left eye. The condition is called keratoconus. For me specifically this causes the entire image that I see in my left eye to be smeared down a few degrees, with a distinct ghost image. The situation is mainly a hindrance when I'm looking at something with sharp edges and high contrast. Here's my not-so-perfect photoshop attempt to show you what I see:
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What I see through my left eye |
Normal vision (my right eye with contacts/glasses) |
The ghost image is sharp enough that, if the contrast of the original image is high enough, then I can actually read the ghost text like in the example above. The ghosting makes it harder to read a book, because one line of text can overlay another, or drive at night, because there is an image of bright traffic signal in every intersection as I drive up to it. Also the distance and position of the ghost image depends on my distance from what I'm viewing, and also the orientation of my eye. If I tilt my head left, then the ghost image rotates/slides to the right.
It's really not as bad as it seems. During the day time I hardly notice at all, because there isn't much contrast in what you look at. It's worst when looking at something bright on a black background. Also, the left handed picture is what I see in my left eye alone. Since my right eye is for the most part normal, I get a combination of both images. When I'm reading I think my right eye must do most of the work, because I often don't even see the ghost image using both eyes. If I close my right, focus with my left, then open with my right again, then I can see a fainter ghost image with both eyes. But if I look away and look back, it goes away.
So what do I do about it? Not much actually. My vision was 20/20 until the middle of my senior year of high school, when I turned 17. (The mean onset of keratoconus is 16). It was a very very odd thing to notice at first. I remember sitting in government class in front of Alex, and I turned around to face him. I noticed that I could see an image of the rim of his glasses floating below the actual rim of his glasses. I think I may have even mentioned it at one point, but got a puzzled look in return. People usually do so when you ask questions about things floating in the air, and then you move your hand around in an attempt to interact with what's floating in the air. At the time the doctors told me the best option at the time was contact lenses, as they reshape the cornea a little. Soft contacts are much more comfortable, but don't provide as much correction to the surface of the cornea. Luckily, my condition hasn't really changed much since the 6-month period in high school, and at the time I decided to try soft contacts first, which my doctor said would be worth at least a try. I could eventually move to hard contacts if it gets worse. My brother had the same problem at an older age, but his was much worse. He eventually had surgery to replace his cornea, which is a slight possibility for me - something I don't look forward to. Until then I'll be putting my contacts/glasses on in the morning like I have every day for the past 5 years.
So now you have some perspective on my perspective...