Another Saturday afternoon that I don’t feel like doing a cursed thing. In DBT this week we talked about not discounting positives in life. To practice what I preach I would have to say I exercised, fed and walked the dog, cleaned up and fed myself. I have tried to do dishes in the dishwasher but the top rack stuff did not get clean. Last time this happened, I poured a whole bottle of vinegar in the bottom of the machine and let it sit over night. The acid ate whatever was gunking up the works.
Hey, housekeeping tip! We aim to cover all possible topics. Even those I know little about!
I continue to look for an answer to how many degrees of arc make up a central vision loss. Dr. William Goldberg in A Guide to Understanding Your Peripheral Vision says a normal visual field is 170 degrees. That is almost half a circle. Of that, 100 degrees are peripheral vision. 70 degrees are central vision. If you think of a protractor, that would take a pretty good chunk out of the middle, but you would still have 50 degrees of arc on either side of that wedge. Not as bad as some representations I have seen.
No clue if I am figuring this out correctly, but it’s a place to start. I asked the representative from the International Macular and Retinal Association the answer and she did not know either. She is going to ask around.
Peripheral vision is broken up in three sections: far, middle and near. When we pick a preferred focal point for eccentric viewing, we naturally try to pick a place in the near peripheral. Color vision and discrimination are worse on the edges.
I have a couple of more in-depth articles to read on that. To be continued.
Still interested in the Nat Geo article on ending blindness. I learned all sorts of stuff about the eye. Did you know the eye is the only place you can look right at the brain without drilling a hole? Eyes are a part of the brain! During fetal development the eyes grow away from the brain, sort of like on stalks; maybe? The stalks analogy was mine.
Eyes, like the brain, are immune privileged. That means it does not have a strong immune response to ‘invaders’. You want to try a new treatment and don’t want the immune system to go crazy? Try it in the eye. Having the ‘perfect’ place means all sorts of studies can be done in the eye. More experiments mean more chances of finding cures. Stem cells and gene therapies all have a better chance of working in the eye so why not start with trying to cure an eye disease? Great idea!
One more time, if we have to be losing our sight, this is the best time in the history of man to be doing it. Keep the faith. To quote Mulder and Scully, “the truth is out there”. We are hot on its trail!
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