Runner Insight

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In 1997, when I flew from Montana to Arizona to meet with an eye specialist, I never expected to hear the news that I got.  He told me that the eye disease I had just been diagnosed with, Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP), had no cure.  And that it would most likely render me completely blind eventually.

As you can imagine, this revelation hit me hard, like a baseball bat to the gut.  At first, beyond the dread, the denial kicked in, and of course this couldn’t possibly be true. No cure?  He had to be wrong about that. I was confused cause my eye doctor back in Montana had thought, with surgery, it could be corrected.  He figured they could just drain the jelly out of my eye, and remove the layer of tissue that had crinkled, causing me to have some vision problems. Then replace the eye jelly, and voila, presto-chango…all better!

Not that I was looking forward to having the jelly sucked out of my eye! Believe me, I wasn’t! That’s disgusting! What if they dropped it or lost it?!  But, as disconcerting as that whole concept was, at least that made it sound like I had hope, that I could get my eyesight back.  My doctor at home had sent me to the specialist in Tucson to find out what had caused this crinkle in my eye tissue in the first place, to get some reassurance that it could be fixed, not to find out that I had a genetic disease and I was going irreversibly blind.

The contradiction between what I had been expecting to find out, and the news I ultimately received, caused a deep dissonance within me, and at least initially, a slight paranoia. You can understand that I was expecting to be told something scary, as well as pretty gross and disgusting, yet still, hopeful. The information I got wasn’t any of that: it went well beyond frightening; it was not disgusting, and certainly the furthest thing from optimistic. Simply put, I was going blind. Period. The End. Stop. End of Story.

Leaving the doctor’s office that day, I was wandering in a cloud of devastation, excruciatingly anxious, with an uncertain fear deep in the center of me. Was it true? Was he wrong? What if he was right? What would I do? What would happen to me? How do I deal with it? How do I tell my family? How the hell did this happen to me? And on and on and on…..

So, what do runners do when they can’t do much else? I don’t know: I guess they run. At least that’s what I did, trying to clear the fog in my head and the fear in my gut.

Since I was staying with friends in Tucson, I decided to run in the neighborhood where they lived. It was an early spring day, and as I ran in this new place, trying to note landmarks and keep track of my location, it sort of took my mind off the overwhelming idea that I was going blind, although obviously, not completely. But as you run, you do get into a percussive rhythm, with better chemicals flowing through your brain and body, and I think that also helps balance out some of the discord. It’s probably why they recommend exercise as an adjunct to therapy.

Anyway, I was rounding the corner to go back. And there was something ahead on the sidewalk. As I got closer, I could tell it was a small bird.  When I bent down, I saw it was a baby dove.

I picked it up to move it off the sidewalk, and as I did so, my mind billowed and my heart calmed with recognition at the simple, but deeply powerful message the universe was sending me: even during times of uncertainty I could be at peace. Things would work themselves out, even if I didn’t know how or why.

How did I know this? I was holding the symbol of peace right there in my hands!

A message for me…..

…..Right when I needed it most.

How ‘bout it?

Vision Runner

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Tags: baby dove, bird, blind, cure, denial, diagnosis, eye disease, eye doctor, eye specialist, eye surgery, eyesight, genetic disease, genetic eye disease, Montana, Peace, Retinitis Pigmentosa, RP, run, Runner, runners, Running, symbol of peace, Vision, vision problems, Vision Runner

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 24th, 2008 at 6:46 am and is filed under Everyday Inspiration, Running, Vision Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.