Thor's Day: A shimmering vision

Seeing through water-filled goggles

By Morris Dean

The retinal surgery I underwent last week involved a procedure (a vitrectomy) to remove the vitreous humor from my eye before the retina was reattached with lasers. Afterwards, the eye was filled with a gas to press against the operated area to promote healing. For a week I remained upright, including while sleeping at night, so that the gas (which of course rises) would continue to exert pressure on the healing area.
    Objectively, that is what was done (in layman's terms).
    Subjectively, though, my left eye (and my brain—with right eye closed) have been treated since to a glorious vision of shimmering water, patches of all colors of light and shadow. I'd searched all week for a way to describe what this has been like. My first, awkward formulation was to say it was like looking through a clear, water-filled balloon suspended from my upper lid. A comic image, but troubled.
    I realized only yesterday that a much simpler, more accessible image is to say it's as though I'm looking through a diving goggle where the water is inside rather than out—except, fortunately, I can't feel the water.
    This marvelous goggle enables me to see a fascinating vision, not only of shimmering patches of light and shadow, but also a horizon above which floats a heavenly firmament. (The "horizon," I was told by my doctor, is the meniscus formed by the edge of the ball of gas. And it's of course the bottom edge—in the bottom of my eye rather than in the top—but as I'm sure you know, or will be reminded, our eyes see up-side-down and our brains flip the images, so that we can ride a bicycle, drive a car, etc.)
    In the ten days since surgery some of the gas has been absorbed, so the meniscus has risen and the shimmering "surface of the deep" has fallen, revealing more of the heavens above, in which at various times one, two, or three spheres have appeared (gas bubbles, I was told). These moons or suns, it has been easy to imagine, are gods or spirits. One bubble, God the Father. Two bubbles, perhaps God and Satan, or God and His Son. Three, add the Holy Spirit perhaps. A heaven friendly with welcoming arms where I may try to imagine eternal solace and joy....
    I of course know I'm "wearing that goggle." I can open my right eye and let my brain withdraw from the shimmering spectacle to attend to reality, and in a few more weeks my left eye too might again share that reality (or some version of it depending on how well the healing goes and on whether my luck holds and my case is not among the five percent where scarring renders the surgery unsuccessful).

Let this be a parable to all who are distracted from reality by visions of heaven and of gods and devils. You need not continue in that wise. You can remove your water-filled goggles.
    For now ye see through water-filled goggles, shimmeringly, ye know only shadows and lights; but when ye take them off, then shall ye know as ye might always have known had ye not put on the goggles of religion.
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Copyright © 2013 by Morris Dean

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