Not long ago, I awoke early for work and put on my glasses. Hey, I’m seeing double. Wait a minute, I can’t see well out of my right eye! With a little note of panic, Maybe I’ve had a stroke! Then the most outrageous thought came: I have to do surgery today!

Wait a minute, these are my wife’s glasses. Phew, that was close.

It seems almost everyone in my family has had some sort of eye problem, from amblyopia to zoster. My time will come. This was a wake-up call to the fact that we do take our vision for granted. The loss of vision and the threat of vision loss evoke powerful reactions.

As I write this, I am recuperating from ear surgery. This is my second ear to be operated on. Yes, curiously, we have two ears, much as we have two eyes, and conditions do tend be become bilateral with time! I was totally unprepared for the advice that I would need surgery to remove bony exostoses that were causing deafness and virtually completely obstructing the external canal. I had not been aware of my deafness except that I would miss things in conversations. The paging operator in the hospital was heard to say, overhead, “Dr. May Thong.” Oh, my goodness, she should change her name! Wait a minute, Dr. Mason! Of course. This is one of many funny incidents. But I wonder how stupid I may have seemed to others.

Last week I saw one of my patients walking into the clinic looking for me. He had obvious profound visual field loss as he scanned the environment. He appeared somewhat unresponsive to the clerks who were trying to direct him. He wears bilateral hearing aids and has Usher’s syndrome. In spite of being in an eye centre, the clerks were frustrated and impatient. Although we try to be aware of our patients’ disabilities, we sometimes do not really understand how difficult it is for them with a hearing or vision problem.

Of the almost 10 million visually handicapped and blind people in the United States, only one-quarter have employment.1

There are no Helen Kellers yet in this century. We need to advocate for our patients, as health care restructuring is tending to concentrate its resources on areas that are felt to be critical to health. To my mind, the special senses, when impaired, are truly critical.

Ian M. MacDonald, MD, CM
Editor-in-Chief

Reference
1. Herrmann D. Helen Keller — a life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf; 1998. p. 345.