My parents were shortsighted – in both senses of the word. My mother had been born severely shortsighted, and my dad had quite a strong prescription for his myopia as well. But the real problem with their shortsightedness was that it had gotten them killed, along with maybe my twin brother and sister. No one knew for sure, and the bodies of my siblings had not been found with my parents bodies, so there was a chance that they were still alive, stumbling myopically around the jungles of Brazil.
My dad had gone through school to become a minister, but after graduation he chose to become a missionary. Before he took up his post after he graduated from theological school, he married the extremely nearsighted lady who gave birth to me in a hut with a dirt floor somewhere in the jungle. My mom was a nurse, and I am sure that she was a great help to my father, living so far from civilization. And if I sound a little bitter or sarcastic about this, it is likely because I am.
I don’t remember much about this time. I was sent back to the USA when I was only 3 because my mom had discovered that I was so extremely nearsighted that there was no way she could find out how strong a pair of glasses that she should order for me. As I found out later, my mom had a trial lens set with her that she used on the natives, as well as my father whenever she examined their eyes. According to my Aunt Sue, who raised me from the time I returned to the States, my eyesight was so bad that mom couldn’t figure out what the right lenses would be for me to see through. And being a nurse my mom at least was smart enough to know that if I wasn’t properly corrected I would likely end up visually impaired for the rest of my life. At least I should give her some credit for that.
When I was flown back to live with my Aunt Sue and to have my eyes looked at by a specialist my mom was pregnant again with twins. She should have come with me, and then at least she and my brother and sister would still be alive. And my dad should have come back as well. This is why I am so angry at both of them for being so shortsighted.
My Aunt Sue was not married when I came back to stay with her. And being the legal guardian of a 3 year old highly myopic little girl didn’t give her much time for dating along with working full time and taking care of me. She was a wonderful lady, and I will miss her every remaining day of my life. I did my best to nurse her throughout her 2 bouts with breast cancer and I still don’t feel this was enough to pay her back for all she did for me.
When I arrived back in Los Angeles I was taken immediately to a hospital, where I saw a pediatric ophthalmologist who was also a specialist in high myopia. I ended up being the textbook case that everyone reads about. My eyeballs were shaped like an egg instead of round like they should have been. Doctor Olliesetter told Aunt Sue that I had been born that way, so my myopia was congenital. The reason my mom couldn’t get a reading on the amount of myopia that I had was that, while she had enough lenses that she could have placed into the trial frame to stack them to get to my then -35D prescription was that I couldn’t read well enough to tell her what letters I could see. And I couldn’t even see well enough for her to teach me the letters without glasses. My vision practically ended at the end of my nose.
Doctor Olliesetter did all sorts of tests to see if he could fix my eyes. Normally in someone as shortsighted as I was the possibility of retinal detachment is very high, but my retina’s had grown from birth to fit my egg shaped eyeball, and there was no signs of any weakness in my retinas. Finally I was given a pair of glasses to wear, and all of a sudden my world was now visible to me. With my glasses with their then -36D prescription I didn’t have eagle eyes or anything close to really good vision, but the massive blur of my uncorrected myopic vision was now sort of corrected and I could see doors and windows and trees and grass, and sidewalks and people’s faces and so much more that it was rather exciting to me.
I could tell you all about growing up, and going to school and learning to read and so many more things, but this wouldn’t be of much interest to most people. The only thing that really impacted my life was when Aunt Sue got the news that my parents would not be coming back to get me like they had promised. There had been an attack on the native village where they were living and all of the non-natives had been killed. The bodies of my mom and dad had been found, but my one year old twin siblings had not been found either dead, or alive.
The State Department had arranged for my parents bodies to be returned to Los Angles, and we had a funeral for them. Since my baby brother and sister had not been born in the States, nor had their birth’s ever been registered, they were now nothings –they did not exist in the eyes of the US government. A funeral was held for my parents. I remember being there – sort of, but at age 4 and a bit a child’s memory is sketchy at best and I had to depend mostly on what Aunt Sue told me.
I can’t give Aunt Sue enough credit for how she raised me. She was absolutely wonderful towards me and she made me into the girl I am today. It would have been easy for her to just tell me that I was so blind I would always be a disabled person, but she made me believe that, while I am considered disabled I could if I chose, lead a productive life. She helped me with my schoolwork as I grew older, and she provided me a shoulder to cry on when other kids teased me about my very strong eyeglasses. And as I grew older my eyesight got a bit worse and my glasses had to become stronger and stronger until I was around 18 and I ended up with the same prescription I have now at age 24.
I personally do not feel I am disabled. Yes, my glasses are extremely strong and the lenses are rather strange looking. With my -48D prescription I am only able to have around -30D ground into the rear of the lenses. That leaves the other -18D to go in the front. Of course, my lenses are double myodiscs, and I suppose the correct terminology would be biconcave double myodiscs. The biggest button I can possibly have (myodisc circle for those who do not know what a button is) is about 25mm for the rear and 28mm for the front. This in itself isn’t so strange looking, but the fact that I chose to have the carrier frosted rather than clear does make my lenses rather weird looking. I tried to have the carrier done as a clear lens a few times in the past, but I found that since I can’t see a thing unless I am looking through the dead center of my lens having the area around the lens done as a frosted part kept my eyes focused through the only area that I can see through.
I am on disability allowance though. Dr. Olliesetter, who had been my eye doctor since I first had my eyes examined, has been a very good friend to me. The technical definition that is the requirement for disability in the USA is no better visual acuity than 20/200 with glasses or contacts. But the determination of this is extremely subjective and while Dr. Olliesetter tells me just between us that he feels my V.A. is actually closer to 20/70 most of the time it is easy for me to advise a vision tester that I can see only 20/200 clearly with my glasses on. Dr. Olliesetter feels that the USA should consider the UK definition, which states that:a person can be certified as severely sight impaired if they are “so blind as to be unable to perform any work for which eye sight is essential” The test is whether a person cannot do any work for which eyesight is essential, not just his or her normal job or one particular job." I do have a much reduced visual field as well, and Dr. Ollisetter feels that I am truly blind enough to be classed as visually disabled.
Since Aunt Sue passed away when I was 21 I have been living in the condominium that she left me in her will. Because I am classified as disabled I was able to obtain a position looking after disabled children in a school for children with special needs, and I quite enjoy that. My salary is low, but with the disability allowance I receive I am able to survive and some months I actually put some money aside in my savings. I am going out with a handsome, tall and muscular ex-serviceman who seems to understand my visual limitations and apparently does not care that I need strong glasses to see much of anything. Even though my life is good I am still very angry about the foolishness of my parents, not only for giving birth to me in a remote village in Brazil, but also for giving birth to a brother and sister that I will never know. And in a way that is almost the worst part. Not only was I never able to see them, but I don’t know if either of my siblings might possibly be still alive.
The thought that I might have siblings somewhere in the world has consumed me over the past few years since Aunt Sue died. I have searched under any headings that I could think of on Google looking for people with high myopia. I am almost positive that both my twin siblings will be severely myopic – maybe not with quite as strong a prescription as I have, but I am almost sure that they would wear myodiscs. Last week I did a google image search, and I am pretty excited. I might have found my sister. Under images of highly myopic women I found a picture of a girl that looks to be a dead ringer for a picture of my mother that Aunt Sue had. And the real kicker is that she has a dimple, right in the middle of her chin just like my mom. Aunt Sue and I have the same dimple.
I tracked the picture to a website devoted to GWG’s – girls wearing glasses, which gave me the girl’s name. She was called Carmen Reinke and she was from San Paulo Brazil. I then did an internet search for Carmen and I discovered that she had a Facebook page. Of course I tried to friend her. I hoped, but didn’t really believe that she would accept my friend request, and I waited anxiously for a week before she did. Not knowing anything about her I was afraid to write to her to see if she was adopted. And I didn’t even know if she spoke, or wrote English. If she was only conversant in Portuguese I was in trouble because my Portuguese was nonexistent.
I dithered for a couple of weeks before I decided to send her a short note in English – mostly just to say hi, and to ask her if she could speak and write English. I do not generally post any pictures of myself on Facebook because my strong glasses generally bring a lot of unwanted attention. However, I had posted a couple of pictures and had included a third one as my cover picture, all of me wearing my glasses, hoping that she would see them but I would escape the unwanted attention. I know that there are a lot of nice people who find my glasses to be super special, and I suppose if I were to get to know them I would readily discuss my vision and my vision problems. But there are too many weirdoes’s who only ask the dumb questions such as “how strong are your glasses, how much can you see without glasses, you must be blind without your glasses and of course the best one is will you marry me?” These people do not get, nor do they deserve a reply. I don’t mind that people find my glasses to be special, but I do not want my glasses to be my main attraction. I am a reasonably attractive young lady, and I have a brain. I had needed to post the pictures though hoping that Carmen would see the resemblance and would be curious.
While I was waiting for Carmen to reply I found the best old picture of my mom that Aunt Sue had kept. This picture had been taken when she was in her early 20’s and she was right around the same age as Carmen was right now. A friend of mine was pretty good with a photo shop program and I went to see him. He converted my mom’s picture to a digital picture. Then he found a very good picture of Carmen on her Facebook page and we downloaded it to his computer. He took my Mom’s old early 80’s large eye sized big framed thick myodisc glasses from her face and put them on to Carmen’s face using his program. Then he took Carmen’s glasses and photoshopped them onto my mom’s face. When he had done that he had a picture of my mom wearing Carmen’s glasses and a picture of Carmen wearing my mom’s glasses. If you then placed my mom’s picture wearing Carmen’s glasses into a group of her pictures and then looked though the pictures you would not be able to tell that it was a picture of my mom unless you knew what had been done. This was sort of scary to me.
Carmen finally responded to my message in English. She told me that she had studied English in school, and that she was still learning it in nursing school but she wasn’t very good at it yet. I sent a message back telling her that it didn’t matter how good her English was as long as she could understand what we were talking about. I then told her that the reason I wanted to friend her and then wrote to her was because I saw in her a resemblance to my mom, and to myself. She replied that she had noticed that I did look a lot like her – almost like we could be sisters.
That gave me the opening that I needed. I told her that I actually did have a sister somewhere in Brazil, but that I didn’t know if she was dead or alive. I told her that my parents were missionaries in a certain region of Brazil, and that I was born there, I basically told her everything, and I ended with the story of me going to my parent’s funeral back in Los Angeles, and that the bodies of my brother and sister had never been found.
It took a few days before she replied. She told me that she had been adopted, and that she had a twin brother, but he died when they were 6. She also told me that she had spoken to her adoptive parents and that they confirmed that she had been born in the region of Brazil where I had been born, and that my parent’s had been killed in. She ended her note by saying that we actually might be sisters.
With that I sent her an e mail with the photoshopped pictures of my mom wearing her glasses, of her wearing my mom’s glasses and of course the picture of mom wearing her own glasses. She wrote back telling me that now she was convinced we were sisters, that this could not be just a coincidence.
I wanted to go to San Paulo to visit Carmen in the worst way. But there was still 3 months to go before the disabled kids I was in charge of were off for summer holidays. I needed the income from my job and could not just take off. In the meantime I went to the Federal Building, and spoke to the people in charge to see if there was anything I could do to bring my sister to the USA if she wanted to come. There was a file on me, because Aunt Sue had been able to get my out of country birth to parents that were US citizen’s registered and she was able to get me a birth certificate. My parents were also on file as being deceased US citizens murdered in a foreign country. But there was no mention of the fact that there might possibly have been 2 other children that were born in Brazil. After speaking to a very nice man who seemed to be either in charge, or else he was very important around the department it was suggested that DNA testing could be used to prove that Carmen was my real sister, and any correspondence between my mom and her sister could also be used to prove that mom had one or two more children while out of the country.
When it came time for my 30 day summer holiday I flew to San Paulo. Carmen and her boyfriend met me at the airport, and drove to her parent’s home. Unfortunately Carmen’s adoptive parents were not very conversant in English. But my smattering of high school Spanish, which has many similar words to Portugese, along with their smattering of English allowed for a bit of conversation. I asked about Carmen’s twin brother, and I was told that he had died from meningitis when he was 6 years old. Just the fact that Carmen had a twin brother proved to me that she was my sister. And when the DNA results were in I was sure that this would be the confirming proof.
I had been DNA tested at a lab back in Los Angeles. Carmen had her test done in San Paulo, and the results were sent to the lab that I had used for confirmation. Before I left Brazil to return to my job the lab in Los Angeles had faxed to let me know that the results proved that Carmen was my full sister. I told her that it was conclusive that we were sisters, and she liked it that she now knew more about her heritage and that she had a sister.
Carmen’s adoptive parents were wonderful. They invited me back to spend Christmas with them, and I agreed. My boyfriend, Doug Mac Kenzie wanted to come with me, and so both of us spent the week over Christmas with Carmen and her boyfriend. I liked the fact that Carmen’s parents told me that I was to consider myself their daughter as well now.
I was going to go ahead and register Carmen’s birth with the Department of Immigration at the Federal Building in Los Angeles. I went to see the same gentleman that I had met with before and he surprised me very much when he told me that with the paperwork that was available to us that Carmen’s birth could easily be registered, and Carmen would be a US citizen but he would not recommend doing that right now. Apparently if Carmen was a US citizen she would have to go to all the trouble of filing American income taxes. I spoke with Carmen about this, and she decided that since she had a Brazilian passport already, and since she had no real urge to live in the USA she would likely be better off not becoming a citizen.
But that doesn’t mean that Doug and I will not visit with Carmen and her boyfriend Jose. They plan to come to Los Angeles to visit us as soon as Carmen is finished her nursing courses. And of course Doug and I will go back to Brazil to visit with them.
I am not quite as angry with my parents now. Finding Carmen has lessened the anger I felt towards them. But I still think it was very shortsighted for two extremely nearsighted people to think that they could raise a very myopic family in a native village in the wilds of Brazil.
Specs4ever Oct 2014
https://vision-and-spex.com/shortsighted-times-two-t774.html