Who Turned Out The Lights?

By Ronald Wilde

Are you depressed because your whole life is a tale of bad luck? Does everybody else get a break now and then but you never do? Is life just not fair to you?
Read Who Put Out the Lights and think about it for a few days. Then you can take a few months to realize you were mistaken. If you are honest you will decide you aren’t that bad off after all. This true story forces the reader to reevaluate things. For example, you work harder than most people and can barely make ends meet, but you are able to work. Your spouse complains all the time and your kids are wild, but they are still there for you; you are not alone. Not to mention you can see and walk.
This narrative is frank and impressively straight talk. Terrible things are presented without sentiment or, remarkably, without anger. Uncomfortable or dangerous situations occur frequently and are reported with a matter-of-fact approach. This technique allows the reader to absorb tragedy on a mental rather than sentimental level, a feat the author seems, incredibly, to have achieved.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ronald Wilde
• Release date: Jan 11, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310541834

Book preview

The Enlightenment of the Night

or Who Tuned Out the Lights!

Ronald Wilde

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2013 Ronald Wilde

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Table of Contents

Introduction

Diabetes Ignored

Vision Going, Job Gone, Off to Louisiana

Last Job to Lose, Dialysis and the VA Hospital

Back Home But Not to Normal

Merryville

Cast of Characters

Portrait of the Home

Together With Mother

Linda

Getting Ready For School

Arizona

Mobility

Learning How to Live

Athena

Not So Private Adventures

The Apartment

My Foot

Back to School

Travel Woes

Moving On

Introduction

The advent of blindness is a ruthless and uncaring thief that steals all it can. When it's done you're seemingly left with only the empty shell of life. I've sixty years of meaningful existence including my wife with three bright children, service in two branches and a long run of gainful work. With the loss of my vision, I have lost not only my family, most of my material things such as home, car and personal items but also the ability's to support and care for the ones I love. Things like respect, feelings of self worth and most importantly the sense of control of my world seemed gone. These things appeared taken and I now have to rely upon the grace of others like never before. I've had many hard challenges to face, like life and death itself, but blindness seems to be the hardest hurdle I've ever had to cross.

Hopefully this story will help those in my same plight and shine a little light on a future that can be filled with hope and possibilities. This is a tale about how my life has changed over many years including the introduction of blindness and how I came to this point.

Diabetes Ignored

There are many degrees of blindness and mine is total in my right eye and little more than light and darkness perception in the left. With more time, even this will be gone. I am a juvenile diabetic diagnosed in 1958 at the age of ten and its long untreated damage took years to progress.

My diabetes was largely ignored and forgotten by my parents, even though my father was a type one diabetic himself. As a child I hadn't put together the pictures etched in my mind of watching him boiling needles and our drastic sudden change of diet. I knew not, that my father’s malady would someday become mine.

Not until I was thirty-one and showing drastic changes in my health such as the inability to share sex with my wife, keeping my concentration and becoming continually angry, did I realize that I too was diabetic. Other signs included being always hungry, yet staying thin and having to urinate frequently. It progressed to the point of losing my mind and my near tragic death. I only wish that my parents had shared this information with me and had truly watched over me.

It turns out diabetes is the most common cause of blindness, kidney failure and amputation. This is the reason the control of one's blood sugar levels and early diagnosis is so important. It is usually a slow developing and an easily misdiagnosed malady. In the early days of its known existence, even before the birth of Christ, it was called the great pretender. Only the results of its damage were seen and it would be more than a thousand years before any understanding of why these problems occurred.

My first sign of an eye problem was at the age of fifty with a persistent and terrible headache accompanied with a sudden, overwhelming general feeling of sickness. Being close to the pharmacy in the local grocery store, I took my blood pressure using the store machine. I discovered numbers so high it seemingly would require the space shuttle to retrieve. My use of this open air machine embarrassed me by the obvious commotion of the many bells and warnings. Upon hearing this, with hands on my face and head turning side to side, I felt like screaming out in horror, Please turn this thing off! People were walking by and staring and thinking who knows what. I don't normally like this kind of attention unless I'm playing a fool and clowning around.

I had just read on the machine that high blood and accompanying eye pressures will cause serious visual damage. Upon hearing the alarms, I got up and rushed out of the store like a thief in panic and tried to have my eyes checked by a nearby optometrist. Luckily for me, he was able to take me directly in and after a brief exam realized his limits and immediately got on the phone and sent me to another doctor and a retina specialist. The optometrist was hampered by his lack of proper equipment to see into the back of my eyes.

The retina doctor’s exam resulted in finding considerable bleeding and other looming and dangerous problems. The exam results put into action a group of other doctors because it was necessary to get my blood pressure and out of control diabetes stabilized to stop the progression of damage.

Next they checked other sensitive organs such as my heart and kidneys for suspected similar degrees of failure. The tests showed my heart appeared healthy but major problems with my kidneys were discovered. I was told that my kidney functioning was at an extremely low level and with few outward symptoms I hadn't realized how poor my health was.

Vision Going, Job Gone, Off to Louisiana

On a weekly basis I was seeing my retina specialist for a series of laser treatments in an attempt to stop my eye’s considerable bleeding. This was done in conjunction with another eye doctor who was treating my related problems of glaucoma. One of the doctors I was seeing jokingly stated I had so many problems that I was no longer a patient but instead a project.

My damaged eyes caused several difficulties with my work as a tractor salesman because I was being relied upon to drive and meet with customers. All the doctor visits meant I was missing large amounts of work and caused our insurance company to become nervous. My driving the company truck safely was now in question also. This forced the insurance rates to go up for everyone there and even though not stated, I eventually lost my job over this.

After being fired in 2001 I took the rare chance to move down to live with my mom in Louisiana and with her help I gained a job working for the city of Merryville as a maintenance worker. Because mom just happened to be friends with the Mayor, the job was possible. It never hurts to know the right people in the right places, does it?

This manual work required a strong back, extensive knowledge of the use of complicated machines such as shovel, rake and lawn mower. This job was one where a feeble mind was an asset. This meant more physical activity than I was experiencing as a salesman which didn't help with my blood pressure.

While riding in the city truck on a particularly rough road and bouncing around, I suddenly lost the vision in my right eye. This loss of half of my sight caught me totally unaware and scared me silly. I couldn't understand what was happening and screamed in fright. Where did everything go? Needless to say, this frantic voicing out caught everyone's attention and we came to a quick stop. It seemed someone turned out the lights and I couldn't find the light switch! It meant a trip the next day to the hospital.

My emergency visit to the VA hospital gave me one of my first tastes of what being blind was going to offer. My driving was already deteriorating and the loss of vision in my right eye wasn't helping these matters. There were few people willing to ride with me already and with my depth perception gone, my driving skills turned worse becoming scary and more than a little dangerous.

My youngest brother dramatically brought this matter to my attention the last time he ever rode with me. He was going to town and I offered to take him. About half way there he turned to me and said, You must get really good gas mileage. The observation confused me and I asked why. With a solemn face, he said, Damn it Ron, I can walk faster than this.

As chance would have it, I had to drive alone down to New Orleans in this condition for an eye exam. This turned out a long trip and ended up more difficult than I expected. The long and tiring drive was complicated by the fact that I wasn't able to see the signs in the morning sun. Much of my navigation was done by estimating times to get to known points and once close, I had to pull over and get under them to read. This added unnecessary time to get there. Luckily I left early for not knowing exactly how long the trip would take. It was a good thing the state patrol wasn't watching these more than strange actions. Telling the