Have you ever had a picture taken of the inside of your eye?

I have.

During finals week of my freshman year of high school, a small grey cloud began to grow inside the upper right corner of my right eye. At first, this just made scantrons and applying eye shadow difficult, but as the cloud grew, it soon took over my entire field of vision. I could no longer read whiteboards, or books, I lost my depth perception, and began experiencing a severe ache in my left eye because of the extra strain.

My mother took me to the eye doctor and he was alarmed at what he saw, and immediately referred us to the Stein Eye Institute at UCLA. My files were faxed there and we drove the 3 hours to Los Angeles. The doctors there took pictures of my retina (much more difficult in 1998 than it is now,) shone lots of lights in my eyes, and asked me many strange questions.

No, I did not think I had an eye parasite.

No, I did not think I had a fungal eye infection. 

No, I had not travelled to the Midwest or to a rainforest recently.

No, I was not doing drugs. 

No, I did not need my mother to leave the room so I could answer more honestly.

                They sent the pictures to eye specialists around the world. And finally a surgeon met with me, a kind man with large, soft hands who smelled nice. He explained that for an idiopathic (unknown) reason, a blood vessel in the back of my eye had begun growing into the eye itself. The dark cloud I kept seeing was liquid pooling up and blocking the vision in front of my retina. Miraculously, my retina was still intact, though the errant blood vessel was dangerously close.

The blood vessel was growing bigger by the hour. Without immediate emergency surgery the blood vessel would soon detach my retina and I would go permanently blind in that eye. If we had waited even one more day, my retina could have become detached forever.    

I had two choices- I could have laser surgery, which would only take one day, would have an easy recovery, would not require being completely sedated, would kill the blood vessel, and once the inflammation decreased, I would get some vision back. However, all the tissue the laser touched would be permanently dead and I would have a large permanent blind spot. Also, there was a 60% chance of the problem one day returning.

Our second choice was to have microscopic laser surgery. This would require a complete sedation and an overnight hospital stay. The surgeon compared it to flying a helicopter toward a tree and pulling up the tree and all its roots without disturbing the soil underneath. It would take a month to recover, and during that time, I would have to lay parallel to the ground to hold the gas bubble in place. The gas bubble would be there to hold my retina in place because they would have to remove some of the vitreous fluid in my ey. it would grow back, but would take time. I would get nearly all of my vision back, and there was only a 25% chance of the condition one day returning.

   I do not recall being frightened. My parents looked worried as they discussed the various pros and cons of the decision. They didn’t seem to know quite what to do. But to me, the decision was obvious. I finally blurted out, “I think we should do the laser surgery.” More vision for longer, less likely recurrence. I wasn’t looking forward to surgery, but I was only 14! I needed my eyes to last me another 80 years! 

I didn’t know it before the surgery, but at least two churches prayed for me during this time. Panama Baptist Church in Bakersfield was my home church at that time, and they prayed for me.

Mountain View Baptist Church in Lake Isabella also prayed for me. My father was doing a lot of supply preaching for them as they were in-between pastors at that time, and I enjoyed riding up the windy canyon road with him to visit the friendly country church. They remembered me, and that Sunday, they especially prayed for me.

I believe those prayers are why I wasn’t frightened. I felt very sure that it would all work out, that we would do everything we could to help me heal and help me retain the most vision possible. I had a sense that Jesus was watching out for me.

The kind surgeon with the soft hands turned out to be Dr. Steven Schwartz, one of the premier eye surgeons in the world.  The surgery was a success, and once I healed (Yes, I did have to lay face-down for a month) my vision returned nearly completely.   

I’m 37 now, so it’s been 23 years.

I am nearsighted and have to wear glasses for driving, or for reading whiteboards from the back of a classroom. If I look for it, I can still find a small blurry area in the upper right-hand corner of my right eye.

For the first 20 years, I could still see the gas bubble occasionally floating about in my eye, but that may finally be gone now, too. In the summer, or if I’m having allergies or intense stress, the scar tissue becomes inflamed and liquid pools around the incision and damaged area again and I see bright flashing lights out of the corner of my vision. It is startling and may last a few weeks.   

I don’t consider these little things very much, because by all rights, I should be completely blind in that eye. 

And that little church in Lake Isabella who prayed for me? I've been a member of that church for over 15 years now.  I married a man from Lake Isabella and once we had decided to live there, I had no doubt that that was meant to be our church.

 It felt like coming home when I was 14- and now, at 37, it still does. 

And even up until 2 years ago, there were still sweet people there who would ask me, “Sandy, how is your eye?”

And I would tell them, “It’s doing great. Jesus healed me. Thank you for praying.”

I once was blind, but now I see.