Blindaversary

It seems like a lifetime ago.  At twenty-two years, I suppose it is a lifetime.  The anniversary almost slipped up on me this year.  But, this uncanny and often irritating ability I have to remember dates and even days of the week they happened—always pops up sooner or later.  This year, September 25^th falls on a Wednesday, just as it did in 1991.

The week before, I’d had a dye test where they photographed the blood vessels in back of my eye after a yellow dye was injected into a vein in one of my arms.  Then I nervously waited for them to call with the results.

They called me at work that Wednesday morning.  “You have diabetic retinopathy.  If you don’t have laser treatments right away you could lose all your vision.” 

Outside my office, my co-workers went about their business.  If someone’s world comes crashing down around them and nobody else hears it, did it really happen?  Apparently so. 

I needed air.  I needed space.  My office was closer to the back of the building.  The next thing I knew, I was standing in the alley, trying to catch my breath.  The intense Austin sun felt like it would cook me alive.

Home.  Just get home.  Now.

I found my way to the front parking lot, got in my truck, and drove to my apartment.

What am I going to do now? 

I had only been there a few months.  My health insurance wasn’t due to start until October 1^st.  Just a couple of months earlier, I discovered my kidneys were failing.  This news was like a hammer driving a nail all the way in.  Any pretense I had that maybe, just maybe I could stay in Austin and make it all work was gone.  After Tampa, Kansas City, and Dallas, I’d finally a place—the place—I wanted to stay.  It was so much like the quirky college town where I grew up but with big city amenities.  My paychecks were increasing.  After laying the groundwork, the accounts I’d opened were really starting to produce sales.  Life was on a steady upswing.  Well, except for failing kidneys.

My parents were anxiously waiting to find out the results of the test.  I called them and we made plans for them to drive to Austin the first weekend in October to help me pack up and move back in with them.  Life as I knew was coming to an end, but at least I wouldn't have to face it alone.  Still, as the oldest kid, I felt guilt at being a burden on them.

Since then, some of my worst nightmares came true.  Some amazing blessings rescued me.  I’ve had to pick myself up and go forward countless times.

When I want to torture myself, I try to imagine what life would have been like if my health hadn’t failed and I’d been able to stay in Austin.  I’ve been back twice—in 1996 and 2001.  Each time, it was so much bigger than before.  From what I hear, it’s much more expensive and resembles Dallas and Houston more than the place I remember.

There are two things I was good at then and, thanks to professional guidance and practice, am even better at now.  Writing and visual art.  There are some gifts that vision loss can dull, but never take completely away as long as there’s some vision left. 

In the months that followed me leaving my job, selling most of my things, and returning to Arkansas, I had plenty of time to sit around my parents’ house and ponder the future.  There was one thing I vowed to do over and over again: surpass the expectations of people who thought I wasn’t capable of much anymore.  I approached my new reality with the same tenacity I’d used to support myself in college and graduate in four years, even after changing majors and watching some of my friends give up. 

I run into trouble when I expect things to be as easy as they are for people who can see fine.  Sometimes it turns to resentment, which is as unproductive and unhealthy as guilt—another emotion that invades my mind when I remember the mistakes I made as a young diabetic in my teens and twenties.

On this day in 1991, the sense of fear and loss had me wondering if I would ever accomplish anything.  I assumed that my skills and abilities would be frozen where they were then, as a 27 year-old who had no idea what he really wanted to do with his life.

Back in 1991, it would have helped me to know that before I was halfway through my forties, it would be the most productive decade of my life (so far).

In 1991 it would have given me such relief to know that by the end of that decade, I would no longer be diabetic.

In 1991 I would have been overjoyed to know that ten years later, after eye hemorrhages, invasive procedures and procedures, I would create a large piece of art like this.  

 Visit Jim's web site JimFairbanks.net

Blindiversary

September 25, 1991

I’d been in Austin since the beginning of June, working as an outside sales rep.  My territory was southwest Austin--everything south of the Colorado River and west of I-35.  That was the part of town where the Hill Country begins to rise up from the more flat Texas terrain.

“You have diabetic retinopathy,” a retina specialist’s nurse told me on the phone.  “If you don’t get laser treatment right away you could lose all your vision.”

It was what I half expected to hear and what I feared hearing the most.  It knocked the wind out of me.  I stammered out a few questions.  Around me, co-workers buzzed around on what was a typical Wednesday for them.

Air.  I needed air.  The news propelled me from my office to the alley behind the building.  The glaring sun, the tears in my eyes, and what turned out to be a serious problem all conspired to turn my surroundings into a runny watercolor painting.

I needed to be alone with this news.  I needed to get home.  It wasn’t far to my truck and I drove home on autopilot, wondering if I would be able to drive in the months ahead.  Once I was home, I called the retina specialist’s office again and asked the nurse more questions.  She was kind and compassionate.  She spoke in the perfect tone of voice for someone in obvious despair.

“I don’t know what to do,” I told her.  “WHAT AM I GOING TO DO?”

“I can’t answer that for you,” she said gently and I knew she wished she could tell me the right thing to do.

Next, I called my parents in Arkansas, who were waiting to hear what the report was.  By this point, my brave face was history.  Nothing had ever terrified me so much.  My mother wanted to reach through the phone and hug me.  Her little (well, twenty-seven year old) boy was hundreds of miles away and in trouble.

“Maybe you should come back here and we’ll face this together,” she finally said.

It was the thing I needed most.  It was the thing I feared most.  The prospect of losing my independence, possibly my sight, my income, and facing God-only-knew what kind of gruesome eye treatments loomed in front of me like an 18-wheeler out of control on an icy road.

Over the next several days, I packed, sold things, threw things away, tried to do a few final fun things in Austin, and worked my final days at what would end up being my last full-time job until 2004.

“They’re doing some great things with eye stuff down in San Antonio,” my boss told me.  “You should check into that.”  She was trying to be encouraging, trying to help me find a solution without rearranging my whole life.

But I needed my family.  It would mean leaving a city that I absolutely loved—a bigger version of the funky college town where I grew up, but in Texas.  It would mean going from calling on corporate accounts most of the day, talking to dozens of people in person or on the phone.  It would mean giving up the freedom of driving around without anyone looking over my shoulder while I did what I was good at—sales.  It would mean staying with my parents at the edge of a small town and having to rely on them for everything.

I was optimistic.  The laser treatments would fix the problem.  I might lose some vision but I’d figure out a way to survive, maybe even thrive.  It was a good thing I didn’t know exactly how bad things would get before stabilizing.  The eye hemorrhages.  The surgeries to clear the blood out of my eye.  The frustration that crossed over into rage.

My vision was stable for several years, with acuity of barely legally blind.  I started receiving Social Security and Medicare.  My sight was stable for the next several years while I faced other health issues.  Life-threatening situations at times complicated by my reduced vision.  Other times, having been toughened up by the experience, it might have helped me deal with what lay ahead.  By the time those scarier situations came along, I’d already learned how to make things work for myself.  It was just a matter of figuring out a new method of going about things.

My sight worsened in 2003.  It wasn’t supposed to happen, but that’s another story.  It’s been more of a struggle since then.  A contact lens in my right eye and tinted prescription glasses for my left have improved how well I see to a level it hasn’t been in over eight years.

Now I look ahead the next twenty years.  I pay attention to all the news about medical breakthroughs regarding vision, especially the retina.  I’m encouraged by stem cell therapy and the development of a bionic retina.  After all my eyes have been through, I’m not afraid to try something promising that might help.

I don’t know what the world in 2031 will look like—but I suspect I’ll be able to see it even more clearly than I do today.

Austin Revisited

Twenty years ago this week, I started a new job in Austin.  There was only a 3% vacancy rate on rental property at the time, so I had to stay with my friend Randy and his roommate, Peggy, until I found an apartment.  They lived in a small house near the airport.  Every day, dozens of jets flew over, making the whole place vibrate.  Conversations were put on hold.  Parts of TV shows went unheard.

After weeks of looking every afternoon after work, I finally found a nice place not far from downtown and the Colorado River, which dissects the city on the southern edge of downtown.  The tall buildings were reflected in the water.  To get to work, I took

Riverside Drive

to the western part of town, got on a highway, and then off at

Bee Caves Road

, where I worked.  I thought that was an interesting name for a city street and wondered where the caves full of bees were.

My job was sales representative for the Kinko’s in that part of town.  It was one of five in the city.  At the time, Kinko’s was moving from the college market toward a business-based clientele.  I called on businesses in the southwestern part of Austin, which is where the Texas Hill Country begins. 

I was doing outside sales (again), living in a funky, offbeat college town (again), and best of all, I was in the hills again (though not as green as the Ozarks).  I felt right at home.  It was like Fayetteville, but with all the big city amenities.  I was moving there from Dallas, so that was important.  And after living in Big D, Austin seemed quaint and small by comparison.

Austin and I have been through major changes since then.

Years earlier, Austin had been described to me as a “bigger version of Fayetteville.”  That turned out to be quite accurate—even down to how the city was laid out.  The downtown was closer to the southern—and less affluent--end of town, a street running east-west lined with bars, restaurants, and shops connected downtown to the university campus.  A bypass highway looped around the west side of town.  Farther to the west was a lake, just a few miles out of town. 

In May, I had used my employee flight privileges with Southwest Airlines to fly to Austin from Dallas.  It was only a 45-minute flight, but a three-hour drive.  I wanted to be fresh for the job interview and didn’t want to get up at the crack of dawn and risk truck troubles on the way there.

It would be an understatement to say I was optimistic.  It was a base-plus-commission salary, which meant unlimited income and even at the minimum it was more than I was making at Southwest.  I was excited about living in a more laid-back, offbeat place that reminded me of where I spent most of my childhood. 

At the airport, I rented a car.  I don’t remember the make and model.  I do remember it was nice, newer, and cleaner than my truck.  The stereo sounded good, too.  As I pulled out of the airport, I heard a new song by Lenny Kravitz for the first time.  “It Ain’t Over Till It’s Over” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmENMZFUU_0)  And I I thought.  Over?  This is a new beginning.  I’ll get this job.  I’m meant to be here.

They called and offered me the job on my birthday, which was on a Friday.  “Can you start on Monday?”  I told them I could, without knowing how I was going to pull it off.  But, just like I have a tendency to do, I found a way.

While staying at Randy’s those first few weeks, my route to and from work took me past The Texas School for the Blind.  More than once, I patiently waited while teachers helped blind kids cross the street and I felt grateful for not having to grow up blind.

After living in expensive Dallas and making dismally low wages, I was in credit card debt up to my nearsighted eyeballs.  But, I was full of optimism.  My life was on an upswing.  Driving around town, calling on accounts, I often heard a song by the Divinyls titled “Make out Alright.” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GG8ZhzJteFY)  It could have been my theme song. 

Barely a month into my new life, I learned that my kidneys were failing.  I’d known something was wrong because of all the edema (swelling) in my feet, which gradually moved higher until I looked like an overweight guy from the waist down, and a skinny guy from the waist up.  It hurt to walk (more like waddle), but I persevered.

A thin but comfortable layer of denial allowed me to keep from panicking, hundreds of miles from my family and without health insurance until I had worked for Kinko’s three months.  A song by a new artist named Seal titled “Crazy” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgxpDgSjxkA) gave me a valuable piece of advice.  “We’re never gonna survive unless we go a little crazy.”

To get rid of the edema, the doctor put me on strong diuretics, which made me tired.  The intense summer heat central Texas drained me ever further.  My sales—and income—increased, but I really pushed myself to make it happen.  The easier life I expected wasn’t happening.  Every day, I hid my terror and called on businesses in my territory with polished fake confidence.

I also noticed traffic signals didn’t look as clear as they should have.  For years, my contact lenses wore out and had to be replaced every September.  With money being tight, I told myself I could wait until then if it didn’t get much worse.  It had gotten a little worse.  I discreetly used the copy machines at Kinko’s to enlarge business cards and other printed material I couldn’t quite see well enough to read.

September rolled around and the eye doctor sent me to a retina specialist, who injected yellow dye into a vein and photographed the veins in back of my eyes.  I went home with skin temporarily stained yellow and worried all weekend.  The diabetes had already damaged my kidneys.  Now it looked like it might have hurt my eyes, too.

The following Wednesday, they called me at work.  “You have retinopathy.  If you don’t have laser surgery soon, you could lose all of your vision.”

Even though I was halfway expecting it, it was still a big jolt.  I ran out of my office, jumped in my truck, and drove home to break the news to my parents.  It was time to stop pretending everything was OK.  We decided I would move back to Arkansas and stay with them while I endured whatever was going to be done to save my sight.

On my way home from work one afternoon with the radio on (as usual), I heard a song by a heavy metal band for the first time—“Silent Lucidity” by Queensryche. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LniY0pDQGaE)  It was soothing, like it was just for me, with lyrics like “If you open your mind to me, you won’t rely on open eyes to see.”  The main message of the song was about someone or something watching over you, protecting you in the night.  I guess you could say it was a “God Moment.”  It gave me the first bit of peace I’d known in several weeks.  I had been so distracted listening to the song, I looked up and noticed the light was green.  When had it changed?  The driver behind me never honked their horn, and for that I was grateful.  I continued on my way, trying to concentrate on my driving and the lyrics of the song.

I had a sale and sold most of my furniture and some other things I didn’t need anymore.  My time in Austin had only lasted four months and I hadn’t felt well enough to get to know the place like I wanted.  I knew I had found the place I wanted to stay, even if I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life.  In a city like Austin, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.  I felt defeated, that so much was left undone.  There are still times when I wonder what my life would have been like if my health had held up and I stayed in Austin.