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Simulated Double Vision
4 September 2024
On Friday we'll be seeing an ophthalmologist about our double vision, which has persisted since Aug. 13. There are several kinds of double vision so we thought we'd try to simulate ours with a photo.
Double Vision. What we see when we open both eyes.
In our case, each eye sees what it usually does. The left eye sees near things well while the right sees far things well and between the two of them, with the help of our central processing unit (our brain), we can read and drive without glasses.
The problem comes when both eyes are open. Our brain can't quite synthesize the two sets of data. So what we see is something like the image above: two views of the same scene slightly ajar.
As this has gone on, though, our brain has compensated somewhat. Unreliably. It discounts one view in favor of the other, which we sometimes help along by squinting or closing one eye (which is how we manage reading a monitor or phone screen). Sometimes we wear an eye patch to make that less of a physical effort.
But walking around we can't seem to maintain any balance. We wander down the sidewalk.
But we have been walking. Several thousand steps a day. Which is what we usually do. We just can't bring a camera along. It's just a bit too much to manage.
The photo above of the long series of steps was taken just after we had managed to navigate down them on a walk this weekend. We'd also just talked to a friend on the phone who had repeatedly asked us if we needed a walker or at least a cane.
We thought the original photo (not doubled) would reassure them.
You'll notice there are no handrails. So we one-eyed it. But the trouble with that is perceiving depth. Fortunately we know these steps. We just had to get in rhythm. Each flight.
There's no treatment we know of. But every morning we wake up hoping our vision has been restored by the night's rest.
There's so much to see, after all.