My Vision This Week... and Far Too Often

I regularly struggle with vision issues as a result of my Systemic Mastocytosis illness. Actually, not a week goes by which does not include some sort of vision issues which demand a change in plans.

This past week I struggled with quite a few symptoms at the whim of angry mast cells some of which made me sick as a dying, mangy dog but I also struggled with vision issues such as blurriness, some double vision and a slight loss of color saturation. For the most part, my vision was rather poor all the time this past week but as my overwhelming fatigue would worsen, my eyesight worsened exponentially. There is no doubt that fatigue plays a role in the severity of my symptoms and these problems with my vision are impacted in the same way.

The loss of color isn't too annoying and typically affects reds the most but the blurriness really gets on my nerves. The only time the loss of color saturation is annoying is when one eye is different than the other. Of course, the blurriness is quite annoying when the eyes differ too. During these periods, I will do a lot of sleeping and listening to music and movies when my eyesight gets this bad. Reading of any sort is impossible... although... I have had some limited success on my big screen IPS monitor for my desktop computer. Text on this screen is huge so that helps a little but only for short durations. It is quite tiring trying to focus so this only works for short durations. Driving is impossible as are many, many activities. My photography and artwork get put on a back burner during these periods as well.

This afternoon my eyesight was quite bad but after napping for a few hours and adding some extra medications into the mix, I am seeing almost normally again. I decided to snap a photo of a page from one of my magazines and use my computer to digitally manipulate the image to show what I am seeing during these periods. I think this image (at right) is close to what I see.  

Due to my vision problems, I have switched to all digital magazines using my Kindle Fire HDX 8.9. Viewing magazines and books on this device is abundantly easier to do than with paper books and magazines. The contrast and brightness make it much clearer and the ability to zoom into the page is like having telephoto zoom lenses on my eyeglasses!

Anyway... this photo is a sample of my vision for the past week... and far, far too often.

At left, a magazine viewed on a 'good' day... at right, an example of my typical vision problems
of blurriness, double vision and loss of saturation.