Looking Ahead

By Anita Garner

aka Blinky Faye Jones

Thank you for all the messages and good wishes and encouragement about Monday’s eye surgery.  I miss connecting with all of you. Here’s my update.

A couple of days after surgery the right eye was already showing me things I haven’t seen without glasses or contacts.  I glance at the TV and realize I’m reading the breaking news crawl across the bottom of the screen. The left eye struggles to participate.  If I cover the left, the right clears up everything, but I don’t want to cover one eye.  I want to give it a chance.

My cataract surgery experience was never going to be an overnight everything’s-all-right situation.  All hopes were pinned on the right eye. There’s no mystery here.  My left eye has never been a participant in my view of the world.  It was a condition that could have been fixed in childhood but I was raised by faith healers and no medical intervention was going to happen in our family. We didn’t go to doctors.

I’m about to sound like a talking head being interviewed to promote a new book and if you’re interested, there’s much about this faith healing family in my new book, “The Glory Road: A Gospel Gypsy Life.”

In the fifth grade an Arkansas teacher sent home a note to my parents saying I couldn’t see the blackboard.  Everything about our learning happened in books and on that blackboard. The school insisted I have an eye exam.  Meanwhile I was moved to the front row, a ten year old’s least favorite spot in class.

Daddy resisted.  He wasn’t rude about it, but he was ready when the principal called on Reverend Raymond Jones at the parsonage.  Back then in the Deep South teachers even came to your house because of missed math assignments.  (I heard from a friend.) It was either get an eye exam, the principal said,  or I wouldn’t be allowed to attend school.

My brother and I had always lied to people who didn’t share our parents’ beliefs.  We didn’t share them either.  Our lies and evasions must have been transparent to adults, but we felt better about lying than about acknowledging one more thing about us that was different.

Off we went, Daddy and me, to a nearby town to see an optometrist who told Daddy it was amblyopia.  Our people called it “lazy eye” which I, the owner of one, did not appreciate.  It could be fixed for good, he said.  “Nossir,” Daddy said.  “We’ll pray on it.”

With every subsequent eye exam, every increase in prescriptions through the years, someone always said too bad this wasn’t treated early on.  If this had been handled by the age of ten or eleven…

This week I’m grateful for science, for a skilled surgeon, Dr. Esther Manolarakis, for a great medical team, and I’m praising my right eye for recognizing that more work remains.  We’re already sharing  many positive experiences. Richer colors, improved distance vision, and I’m told there’s more to come.  Every day I say to my left eye, Come on girl, you can do it.  Just a little more.  Every little bit helps.

I’m still wearing sunglasses in the house some of the time.  My computer screen is too bright for the left eye and the brightness display control isn’t functioning so I dictated this to myself on iPhone, found photos on iPad, and will contact a computer guru soon to fix the monitor’s problem.  Going into surgery this week we knew the left eye would remain limited but there’s still hope for continued improvement as healing progresses.

Thank you for checking in. I can’t wait to bore you next time with all the new things I can see.

Blinky Faye Jones in the near future

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