Stargardts

Stargardts is Ravaging My Retina

What does macular degeneration look like?

Show and tell with my ophthalmologist

In 1998, I was diagnosed with Stargardts Disease. Since then, as my vision degraded, I have been getting annual checkups. The first images of my retina were taken with a Nicon camera. (Do you remember film? So much has changed in 26 years.) Last week, with my phone, I took video of the appointment with my ophthalmologist. Above is an excerpt of the doctor explaining one set of electronic scan.* 

For comparison, below are scans showing a healthy retina and mine in 1999 and 2021. The black areas are dead cells caused by the buildup of toxic byproducts.**

Retina Scans

Comparing the 2021 scans to the scans in the video, there does not appear to be much difference. This was surprising to me. I feel my sight is much worse. Three weeks ago, I was at a park that I hadn’t visited since last spring. Looking out across the lake, I couldn’t make out what was on the other shore. Last year I could.

Knowing my annual eye appointment was near, I was determined to see the scans and compare them to earlier ones. The degeneration appears to be slow, but not in my comprehension of visual information. What will the next year bring?

*See also Diagnosis and Management of Stargardt Disease

**The buildup is caused by variants in the ABCA4 gene, which prevents the ABCA4 protein from removing these toxic byproducts. The ABCA4 protein is involved in transporting a retinal phospholipid compound that helps remove potentially toxic compounds from photoreceptor cells.  –National Eye Institute

A link to my 2019 exam with my Columbia Presbyterian ophthalmologist in NYC .


Mansplaining Modernism

Why? This post serves two purposes.:
1. as my central vision degenerates, I need to develop a least frustrating method for sharing my insights. Trust me, unless you are visually impaired, you are not interested in me explaining further*.
2. Recently I have had several lively conversations on Modernism and Postmodernism where the other party and I could not agree on the scope and meaning of those terms. I want to resolve that. Here goes.

roller and spatual

Broadly, the Modern Era philosophically emerges in the late 18th century with the Enlightenment, urbanization and the Industrial Revolution.

It embodies an outlook that affirms Progress, that is, the power of humans to create, improve, and reshape the world with the aid of rational thought, scientific knowledge, and technology.

Optimistically, it promotes new outlooks and methods that will provide the means to overcome historical limitation and expand possibilities. .

This is reflected in the many manifestos written and distributed expressing modern political ideologies and cultural artistic movements. These epistal expressed a hopeful train of thought. Interestingly, these Truths are not dissimilar to the singular paths to salvation expressed in the religious orthodoxies most modernists dismissed as antique.

If Modernism is objective, theoretical and singular, Postmodernism is based on subjectivity., skeptically rejecting a universal worldview

PS That’s it. I’m ready. That’s enough to make my point in conversation before. pivoting to social and artistic “isms.”

*I am exhausted. This took me hours of research, composing and editing,.
Q. What did I learn? Did I make any progress with writing workflow.
A. Some. I am not discouraged.

With my visual limitations, I need text-to-speech for editing. After I compose a sentence, I highlight it and hit my keyboard shortcut to hear what I wrote, listening for errors. Zooming in 800% on my 32 inch monitor, I can make corrections. The result is short paragraphs, hopefully without distracting typos.

That was my method today.

UPDATE 10/17/22
I recently stumbled on two YouTube posts from the channel Then and Now:
Modernity: An Analysis > Excellent
What Makes us Postmodern? > Interesting
I was provoked. So many more strands to consider. I changed my Twitter profile to Unlicensed Artist, Unpublished Poet. Pseudo Sociologist. I’m ready.