Blinded by the Night

I had a scare this weekend.

Back in high school, a friend of mine with RP (sort of the opposite of mine: tunnel vision instead of a blind spot) had to take special precautions at night. He had to stay in well-lit areas, for fear that darkness would blind him. His fears were well-founded: as a kid, he had gotten lost more than once in the dark. It's what we casually refer to as "night blindness," but it's anything but casual to those who have it.

On the flip side, I had always felt pretty confident about my night vision. True, I'm legally blind in both light and dark, but my vision at night had never been all that bad, relatively speaking. I could walk through a forested area with fully sighted friends, past sunset, and get around about as well as anyone else.

When asked how this was possible, doctors would give a pretty simple technical answer: my rods were affected by the Stargardt's, but not the cones. There's a lot of anatomy I'm skipping over here, but the bottom line is that rods pick up levels of light, and cones pick up color. At night, everyone's rods have to work harder to get by, so mine didn't handicap me as much as during the day.

Of course, I now have a slightly different diagnosis, a more severe form of Stargardt's. The new experts tell me that there is some damage to the cones, as well as o the rods. Now, not being a doctor myself, I can make all kinds of guesses about what this will mean, but even they don't have a great handle on it. So, as with other things, night blindness is now on the table. Hooray.

And that leads us to this weekend. We were staying with my partner's parents, in a small town where there isn't a lot of light at night. Once the outside porch light went out, our bedroom went completely dark: I couldn't even see my daughter's crib across the room. Of course, that always happens when the light first goes out, so no big deal.

Come the middle of the night, I tried to get up to get a glass of water. But as I looked around the room, I realized that I still couldn't really see anything. I got out of the bed: still nothing. I started taking slow, careful steps across the room, feeling for walls and the door, and hoping that I wouldn't crash into the crib. Luckily, my blind-man skills are pretty decent, and I made it to the partialy lit hallway without stepping on clothing or a baby.

When we woke up in the morning, I mentioned it to my partner, starting to explain that it might mean a new and fun problem with my vision. But before I got to that part, she responded that when she got up to feed the baby, she couldn't see the crib or anything else: she just guessed. Her vision, aside from a strong prescription, is fine. She has no night blindness, and neither do I; it was just freaking dark.

So... just a scary moment. No need to panic just yet. Funny how a change in prognosis can make you see things that aren't there... or not see things that are there... or see what you can't see... Whatever.