The Blog for the Sports Gamer

I don’t get too personal on the blog. But I’m pissed and wanted to share. So here goes. Some of you already know this but if you don’t, I have an eye condition called Keratoconus. If you’re bored, you can read about it here.

I didn’t start to notice the condition until about five years ago. Never wore glasses, never had any issue until it started to degenerate. If you read that webpage linked above, I’m at the stage where soft contact lenses and regular glasses don’t really fix anything. They make my Astigmatism more tolerable but I still struggle to look at certain things, and night driving in an unfamilair area is not a good idea. At all. I see much better with glasses than without, but the glasses don’t fix the main issue that comes with this disease.

It’s hard to explain but imagine looking at a neon sign. Now, you prolly just see the sign. I see the sign and another hazy sign right below the real one. It’s almost like seeing double. So when driving at night I don’t see just the car lights and street signs, I see reflectrions of those lights bouncing all over the damn place. It’s loads of fun. I’ve gotten used to it, though and I’m perfectly functional with my glasses and really can get around fine and even drive without them. It’s only at night when things get hairy.

Anyway I tried wearing hard contact lenses. It didn’t take. I not only had to get hard lenses but they were THICK. Imagine again taking two sheets of hard plastic and ramming them into your eyes. I just couldn’t get used to it. I ALWAYS knew they were in there, which was driving me insane. They did help a lot though but the tradeoff wasn’t worth it. So it was back to glasses and seeing double of nearly every light that I looked at.

There is a point to all of this besides me feeling sorry for myself. You can imagine the strain this can put on one’s basketball game. I love playing basketball. Hate the NBA. Love the game. I play every Monday and Tuesday nights from 6-9 in a 30 and over open gym. Tons of fun and I’m actually back into relative shape. My weight has always been a bizarre issue in my life. Combine that with my eyes and I’m a total freak! I weighed 255 pounds in high school, and it wasn’t the “good football” 255 pounds. It was pretty much me being a fat ass. 6′0 255 pounds. The girls flocked, believe me.

Thank God I didn’t need the glasses then…hoo boy. I was always considered the fat guy that was still somehow athletic. Instead of playing HS basketball (which I could have done, I was on the 7th and 8th grade teams despite being overweight) I played golf. I was Craig Stadler. I finished my HS golf career with a trip to the State Finals, a school match record of 32 (3 under par on a par 35 9 hole course) coupled with a complete and total meltdown at the State tourney. I shot two day scores of 86 and 89 and walked off the course disgusted to the point that I haven’t played a wholee lot since, well, at least not as much as I used to.

In college, I got into shape, finally. By the end of my sophomore year at OSU I weighed about 185 pounds because I started to eat right and me and my roomies played basketball on campus every other day for over a year. That will get you into shape and FAST. Also, there’s nothing quite like the incentive of a campus full of good looking women to urge one to shed a few pounds. Worked for me, lemme tell ya. After marriage and after having Ashley, I saw myself slowly getting back into bad habits and I woke up at 220 pounds and freaked out. That led me back onto the basketball court. We joined the local Rec Center and now I play as much as I can. I’m back down to 200 pounds. I’d like to get back down to my college weight, but that might be just a pipe dream. You hear how it is always harder to lose weight when you get past 30. True. Very true.

ANYWAY, back to my eyes. This whole Keratoconus thing makes playing ball tough, especially when my game is beyond the 3-point line. I’ve always been able to shoot but when you see one and a half rims..kinda tough. I’ve adjusted though but last week a guy came out of nowhere and raked me across the face, cutting me and sending my glasses flying. The frames were bent all to hell and so I went to the eye doctor the next day to get a new pair and to order some eye goggles. They turned me onto these $120 prescription goggles that are “very popular.” Being the sucker that I am, I bought them. I had to wait a week to get them and last night the order came in–just in time for Tuesday night hoops. I played on Monday without any glasses and good Lord that was ugly. People saying, “Bill damn it shoot the three!” and me replying, “I’m seeing two rims and both are hazy!” Not good. So the goggles were a big deal.

I get them and they look all new age. These are not James Worthy Goggles. I get to the court and after 10 minutes of warming up they start fogging up. I mean REALLY fogging up. I need a defroster inside my goggles. So I’m gonna try to get these eye drops that a friend at the court suggested that scuba divers wear called “No Fog”. I hope it works, I mean..$120.

You might be asking why I’m telling you all this. Well, I need to vent. When the in-laws are here for Turkey Day and they say, “Boy you sure do spend a lot of time on that computer..” I tend to get pissed. I mean, my job is my computer. I tell them that they’re lucky I’m not working. I have some highly offesive games I could play to totally freak you out. Here, mom, let me fire up Painkiller.

Anyway, that’s my sob story for the holiday. Foggy goggles, bent frames (I’m still waiting for my new frames), a fucked up eye condition, and in-laws.

Happy Thanksgiving.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 24th, 2004 at 3:07 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. 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.