By Way Of Starting

Perhaps one way is to start with my eyes. In late October 2012 I was thinking about possible distractions. I was wondering what I could do that would occupy me and not require the kind of concentration or mental focus that I would have been incapable of possessing at that time. 

I recalled that it had been a while, possibly three years, since I went for a dental check-up. I also remembered a notice about an extensive eye test placed near the cashier of Paris Miki where I got my supply of daily disposable soft contact lenses, six months’ worth of lenses each time. I do not wear the contact lenses every day, and I only started going to this particular optical shop at 313 Somerset in 2011. I could not have seen the notice more than three times, but each time I found myself thinking that I should go for it, I should have my eyes rigorously checked. The dental appointment went smoothly. The eye test was a different story. 

The Paris Miki optician did not understand why I wanted to do a perimetry test, but I was adamant. Still, when the test started, she must have soon realised something was not quite right. She had to prompt me, “The test has started, Wei Wei,” after I did not show any reaction at all to the sparks that were probably already appearing on the screen. And she went on to re-start the test two more times, repeating the instructions slowly each time before she started the machine. After the tests had ended, I asked her, heart in mouth, if the results were okay. “All over the place, Wei Wei,” she said in a rather subdued tone of voice, “the results are all over the place.”

The perimetry test results suggested that the peripheral vision in my right eye seemed abnormally deficient. The deterioration of peripheral vision pointed to glaucoma. I was aware that my maternal grandmother suffered from glaucoma, but I had thought this was to do with her diabetes. The optician said that perhaps the results were due to the sensitivity of the machine in her shop, so she made an appointment for my eyes to be tested a week later on a different perimetry machine in a specialist eye clinic. Again, the results were no good. The advice I was then given was to have my eyes tested again in six months’ time. It was only then, when I told  my mother about the possibility of glaucoma, that she revealed that my aunt, her sister, was a sufferer. Much later on (just two days ago), I found out that my aunt had been using eye drops for twenty years.  

Back in November I did not worry about what all this could possibly mean. Still, between November 2012 and June 2013 when I went for the second round of eye tests, I did consider at the back of my mind the possibility of glaucoma, the fate of becoming blind. A day or two before I went for the tests, I thought about Borges and I wondered how much of his library he had read before he became blind. 

It is June 24, 2013, today. Last Tuesday I went to the Singapore National Eye Centre and had my eyes tested. The results showed that my right eye was afflicted with glaucoma, albeit early stage Open-Angle Glaucoma. I have since found out that this form of glaucoma accounts for at least 90% of all glaucoma cases. It develops slowly and is a lifelong condition without symptoms. 

As I waited for two and a half hours to see the consultant, I did not know yet the full picture, but I suspected the prognosis. I did not know very much about glaucoma then (strangely, I did not look up anything about the disease until the day before the tests at the SNEC) but I knew from the optician at Paris Miki that it led to loss of sight. 

I tried to think about leading my life without the ability to see. I asked myself if I would be able to adapt to this frightening development. I have always prided myself on my adaptability, but I could not fathom how I would cope without my eyes. 

I love to look at things. Looking at leaves and trees and flowers; looking at the perfect symmetry of a cat’s face; looking at my dogs; looking at the people I love; looking at paintings; and most of all, looking at words . . . where would I be, who would I become, if simple acts of looking are to become impossible? 

Waiting in the waiting room, I prayed and I asked God why he would let this happen to me, after all the other traumas of the past ten years. Why now when I had recently moved into my flat and was only just starting to feel again the possibility of happiness, whether it was at work, in my relationships with my family, in my friendships. Most of all, I had been ever so certain that God had granted me a new lease of life. Since the events of October 2012, my relationship with Him had been thoroughly transformed and I thought that surely, having freed me from my shame and self-hatred of the past five years, He would not put me through yet another trial. Surely not, o please, not me, not now.

Even though the damage to the optic nerve in the right eye is irreversible, glaucoma can be controlled through the daily application of prescribed eye drops. In three months’ time I will see the consultant at the SNEC again, I will do another round of tests, and hopefully the results will show that the condition in my right eye has not worsened. This will be the best piece of news one could hope and pray for, given the circumstances. And indeed I hope and pray that it will be my news in three months’ time. 

Meanwhile, between now and then, I shall write and relate the events that took place in October and November 2012. Because: 

When I think about why through the Holy Spirit God prompted me to have my eyes tested so that I could be saved from blindness, I believe that God has preserved my eyesight so that I can write and tell others about what I witnessed with my eyes. I witnessed His presence in October 2012 even though I had turned my back on Him and lived for quite some time as a spiritually blind person, and I did not think myself in any way in need of a cure for my blindness, so thoroughly convicted was I in my sense of self-mastery. There were times when I questioned the need for God to exist. Yet when my hour of need came, I called to Him and witnessed with my eyes His mercy, His grace, His love. 

“I was blind but now I see,” goes the hymn. It is curious how this most worn of analogies, the metaphorical significance of seeing versus blindness, something that I thought myself very clever to have understood when I was eighteen and writing essays about King Lear, that this most common of literary figures of speech, should take on a thoroughly literal resonance for me now.

To relate the journey back to God that I went on in October and November 2012 -- I have been wondering where and how on earth to start. Perhaps one way is to start with my eyes; start by telling what it was that I was led to see in October and what happened next. 

(to be continued)