After reading a great comment on my blog post 11 benefits of having a prosthetic eye covering, I decided to check out Paul’s site. I rather enjoyed reading the post, Adapting to Monocular Vision. It would have been really helpful to have read this immediately after I lost sight in my right eye. I would have been more prepared by knowing what to expect. I can relate to almost everything mentioned, which shouldn’t be surprising considering it was written for people like me. It’s nice to know I’m not alone.

The most frustrating thing for me was putting ketchup on hot dogs. It’s incredibly difficult to line up the ketchup bottle with the hot dog. It took me three attempts: first time I missed the plate, second and third time I missed the bun. My sister was watching and I could tell she was quite amused by the way she was rolling around on the floor laughing hysterically.

The other cool/scary thing is stairs. Certain stair cases can actually look flat from the perspective of looking down them. If there are no shadows on the stairs or they have some sort of patterned tiles on them, I can’t tell exactly where each step begins and ends. Needless to say, I always use the railing, at least to start. Going up stairs isn’t usually a problem; falling up the stairs is much less painful than falling down them.

The worst thing is bashing my head or shoulder on things because I don’t see things on my right side. It’s very painful and worst of all, you don’t see it coming–literally. There have been several door frames I wanted to punish for attacking me for no good reason.

 

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I’m very curious if my pool playing abilities have improved due to having one eye. I’m pretty sure they haven’t. I thought my mini-golf skills had improved, but my two-eyed wife can still beat me.

The tip about sitting at the table in restaurants was interesting. It’s very annoying to be talking to someone sitting beside you at a table, because you literally have to turn your entire head to see them. Of course, this will look rather strange to the rest of the people at your table.  My preferred table seat is right-most corner, preferably the opposite side that the server would come from.

The other fun thing is not noticing someone approach. For some reason, I set up my home office so that my right side is facing the door. Not good. My wife scares the living daylights out of me, albeit unintentionally, on a regular basis. I have offered to buy her tap shoes but she declines.

I’ve been using good old lefty for almost five years now and I’m getting pretty used to it. I can now successfully put ketchup on a hot dog, and I can pour liquids into a glass 95% of the time. Bashing my head on things is not fun and getting foreign objects trapped underneath my prosthesis is incredibly painful, but all in all, I don’t mind having one eye. Could be worse, I could have no eyes at all. 🙂

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My prosthesis

  1. Contact lenses cost half as much.
  2. You can say cool things like, “I was getting my eye painted.”
  3. If you get something in your eye you can take it out.
  4. Cool nicknames such as One Eyed John.
  5. Great excuse for breaking things.
  6. Lack of depth perception cures your fear of heights.
  7. You can choose your own eye color.
  8. You can paint pictures on your eye.
  9. Your eye can turn upside down.
  10. Lack of depth perception causes you to see crazy things.
  11. You can frighten people with it.

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