Vision Correction for the Apocalypse

How LASIK relieves my anxiety but brings up some other thoughts

Hello all —

Before I get into this post which does not specifically deal with the current events of the day, I just want to acknowledge how much chaos and authoritarian shit has been leveled at us by the current Administration this week. It has taken all my power not to spiral to hopelessness. And I’m sure some of you can relate.

So before I go into posting as usual, I’d love to share some people and their work that have helped channel my anger and fear to something either more positive and/or toward action. I’ll do so in list form:

• For an action-oriented approach around anti-racism and people helping people, check out

  Garrett Bucks
  ’
  The White Pages
  ! Knowing Garrett personally and being an alum of his incredible organization, The Barnraisers Project’s, training for anti-racism organizers, I know you’ll benefit from his insights and humor.

• I was so excited to see that the inimitable

  Ayana Elizabeth Johnson
  started the What If We Get This Right? Substack. And already she’s dishing out some incredible content including updates on 47’s attacks on the environment and actions we can take.

• At

  Anya Kamenetz
  ’s Substack
  The Golden Hour: climate, children, mental health
  , she launched a weekly series called “What Really Happened Last Week” that is meant to wake us up from doomscrolling, help us pay attention to what we need to, get a dose of joy, and take action.

• I’ve really appreciated New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie’s regular Reel updates about what is happening right now. While not exactly good news to hear, he delivers them in an even-keeled, straightforward way that helps break the issues down clearly for those of us becoming flustered.

• Brittany Packnett Cunningham posts some great content on her social media to implore us to ignore the noise and take action where it’s most needed, with recommendations included.

There’s more where these came from, but I’ll stop here. What has kept you feeling activated, but not doom-scrolly?

And now onto the post…

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One of the rare pictures of me in my glasses after a redeye flight. Not that I didn’t like the look (I actually kinda dig it), I just always felt like I just got out of bed and was always squinting into the sun (even on cloudy days).

In Station Eleven, buried within a description of the traveling symphony (twenty years post-collapse from the Georgia Flu when 99% of the world’s population perished) with which the main character, Kirsten, has traveled since she was a kid, there’s this:

“The seventh guitar was a nervous person, because he was nearly blind. He’d been able to see reasonably well with an extremely thick pair of glasses, but he’d lost these six years ago and since then he’d lived in a confusing landscape distilled to pure color according to the season—summer mostly green, winter mostly gray and white—in which blurred figures swam into view and then receded before he could figure out who they were.”

We don’t even know the character’s name nor do I remember him being mentioned again. He’s a backdrop to Kirsten’s story and the other named people in the symphony. Yet I think of this seventh guitar all the time. I think of him because, in his fictitious world, he is living my nightmare.

By nightmare, I mean that quite literally. For years, a recurring circumstance in my dreams—from just hanging out in my house to being chased by someone—I’d be grasping around wildly and anxiously in fuzzy environment of colors and movement.

I’ve had impaired vision since I was eleven-years-old and in those early days, as tends to happen, my vision declined rapidly where I’d change prescriptions roughly every year until my Twenties when things leveled out with some more minor changes to prescriptions over the years. I don’t know exactly when I started having these dreams, but they ramped up while I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Malawi.

In the pre-departure health materials, Peace Corps very adamantly recommends that volunteers not bring or wear contacts as it’s very easy to get eye infections in-country. This was a recommendation I ignored more or less. I gave it a try for awhile but because my very sun-sensitive eyes, I was constantly squinting and shading my face while my eyes watered profusely (and yes, yes, I know there’s such thing as prescription sunglasses, but I did not have those). And so, I took the risk and dipped into the extra-large stash of contact lenses that I thought ahead to bring.

I did not develop any eye infections thank goodness. But, perhaps thanks to the vivid dreams that the now black-boxed anti-malarial drug mefloquine can give you, I started to remember these fuzzy, anxious dreams more frequently. And I have these dreams to this day.

Yet even though I’d lived in Malawi where procurement of contacts and correct prescriptions was elusive, it actually never occurred to me to think of what it would be like living without vision correction in a post-catastrophe situation. I couldn’t get seventh guitar guy out of my mind.

Since then, I had been moving closer and closer to removing the issue altogether by getting LASIK eye surgery. And finally, my friends, I did it. Last week. At my follow-up appointment, they’ve deemed my eyesight 20/20, something that has not been the case since I was a child. A modern medical miracle. With that, I’ve relieved so much of my own anxiety. It is the wildest thing to not grasp for my glasses in the morning.

As a privileged person, this was something I had control over and I’m lucky to be in that position. It is not cheap to get LASIK even with the discounts. But also, it’s not cheap to get eye care in general. Forget post-apocalyptic scenarios, there are plenty of people living without the proper eye care today. The WHO found that only 36% of the 1.25 billion people globally who have vision impairment actually have the proper corrective eyewear. The SPECS 2030 program launched last year aims to change that.

But what it reminds me in the world of preparedness is that preparedness is not just thinking about developing good systems in case of disaster, but developing good systems now before shit hits the fan. It’s about resilience and building up a system that is equipped to ensure a high quality of life for those with vision impairment is as necessary as ever.

Listen, I’m thrilled to have 20/20 vision. It has relieved some anxiety. But it’s by far not the only thing that keeps me up at night I’m realizing in the midst of this wild and insane first few weeks of the new Administration. It was something within my control, but it’s made me realize how many people don’t have control over their own vision even in what many in the disaster preparedness field call “blue skies” times.

I honestly don’t know what that would’ve meant for people like seventh guitar in Station Eleven. Someone with vision impairment in that scenario likely would still have the constant risk of losing or breaking one’s glasses and/or never being able to upgrade one’s prescription as a risk. But perhaps we don’t need to think so deeply about apocalypse and more about the immediate where everyone who needs vision correction should have it…for cheap or free.

Note: there are a lot of fantastic domestic and international organizations who are working to ensure proper vision correction for people who most need it. Some U.S. orgs are listed here.