The Optometrist’s Confession

After the Itinerant teacher for the blind and visually impaired visited from the school board visited me it was clear that I needed the services he offered.  What wasn’t clear was my visually acuity (or if I had any) because it couldn’t be measured with the tools he had.

I spent most of the remainder of the year traveling to St. John’s for various eye appointments, CT Scans, ERG’s etc.  while the Itinerant teacher continued to visit my school.  The problem was, no one could figure out what caused my lack of vision.  I could never read past the second line of eye charts.  Not that I read them then.  The top line was always an E and the couple of letters on the second line never changed.  When I had to read them before I started school every student before me said the same letters.

Finally, out of frustration my itinerant teacher asked my mom if she minded if he came to the next eye appointment with me.  She didn’t see what harm it could do and agreed.  This is where  things finally started to unravel and make sense!

Mr. Furlong (my itinerant teacher) met us at the next optometrist appointment and when I was called into the exam room, as I had been many times before he followed.  I sat in the chair and the exam began.  A light was shone into my eyes, one eye was covered and I was asked to follow the optometrist’s finger, which never did seem to work out for me and I was asked to read the eye chart.  When I said I couldn’t see it he asked me to try harder and concentrate before passing me a book to read.  All the while, my Mr. Furlong sat with my mom observing.  Then, when I couldn’t read that print I was handed a children’s book.  When I couldn’t read the large print in that book, the optometrist turned to my mom and itinerant teacher and asked if I could read!

I was fourteen years old and continually got A’s and B’s in school.  This is about when my mom’s jaw hit the floor and my itinerant teacher properly introduced himself!  As the conversation unfolded, the optometrist  informed everyone in the room, except for myself, because it seems I had somehow turned invisible that he had written down that I had 20/80 vision to, and I quote “save the school board some money”!  He knew they would have to hire a student assistant for me, and have the itinerant teacher come visit me if I had major vision problems, so he just didn’t put that on paper!  20/200 vision is considered “legally blind“, and mine couldn’t even be measured to that!

This same optometrist had been seeing me since I was very young.  He even at one point prescribed me glasses, that never did help!  I told him it didn’t make a difference as he flipped through the different lenses, but after awhile he wrote me a prescription anyway and sent us on our way.

All of the times I tripped or bumped into things were blamed on me being clumsy because of my Cerebral Palsy.  I had a black eye for my second birthday because I walked into a door handle!  (No one realized I even had CP back then, but that’s a whole other story!) I’m wondering just how much of this was in fact my lack of vision, and how much was the CP?

Immediately after that appointment we went to my first appointment at the Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB).  This is when things finally started to look up!