I have always valued my eyesight probably above all of my other senses. After all, I use it in most everything I do in my career, and I can’t imagine life without it. It’s also probably the one sense I would be more likely to lose over my lifetime.

It was back in elementary school that I got my first set of glasses. After several years with glasses in my youth and a worsening prescription, my lenses were getting thicker and thicker, even with the efforts in place at the time to reduce the size.

I think it was in middle school that I transitioned into contact lenses, which I still wear primarily to this day, mostly because I am a little self conscious from having such thick glasses in my youth.

My glasses these days are still thick, but because the styles have changed, I have been able to find a pair of glasses that hides that a little.

My contacts are a vital part of who I am. Having my contacts in is just as important as getting dressed or brushing my teeth each day before I leave the house. If I took my contacts out and didn’t have my glasses on, I could not function in my own house, let alone drive a car or complete my duties at work.

It’s bad enough that I can’t read a paper when it is more than a few inches away from my face.

I was reminded how important my eyesight was when I woke up Monday morning and had some irritation in one of my eyes.

I have had pink eye before, and initially that is what I thought I might have — even though I had not been around anyone who had that. I knew I was going to have to wear glasses that day to keep any possible irritation away from my eye.

I texted a friend of mine who also happens to be an optometrist to get some feedback, and she asked me to come in and she’d check me out.

It turned out there was a very tiny fiber stuck to my eye that was causing extreme irritation. She numbed my eye and removed it fairly easily and gave me a prescription eye drop.

The whole experience made me think about what my life would be like if I couldn’t see. Over the years I have known elderly people who have lost their eyesight with age. Other than that, I know only one other person in our immediate area who is blind.

As I wear my glasses this week as my eye continues to heal, I will be reminded that our vision is something we too often take for granted.

 

Sarah Stultz is the managing editor of the Tribune.