"Take care of your eyesight, particularly your right eye"

On this day in 1992, I was sitting across from a Jyotishi from India and he was telling me about my past and my future. This is a good starting point for my blog about intraocular pressure because until this moment, I had never considered the possibility that I would have to pay any attention to my vision health at all. And even at this moment, I pondered the possibility for just a moment before I dismissed it.

I remembered that while welding years earlier, I had gotten a white hot spark of metal in my eye. (I don't remember which eye.) At another time, while grinding and cutting metal during those earlier years, I had gotten a splinter of metal stuck in my eye. It stayed there and began to rust. I finally visited a physician for treatment after it became obvious that the problem wasn't going away on its own. While playing sports, I routinely subjected my eyes to various insults such as sand and mud.

While considering the sage's advise, I thought it might be wise to wear proper protective eyewear in the future. Obviously, I didn't need an astrologer to tell me that! But I was sure that if there was anything about my vision that required care, as the astrologer was suggesting, it was simply exercising some common sense in preventing injury to my eyes from foreign objects (such as hot sparks).

I never have (and never will) take newspaper horoscopes seriously. I didn't believe in astrology most of my life. But about twelve years after this meeting with the Indian astrologer, it became obvious that he gave me valuable advice that not only led the medical diagnosis by a dozen years, but pinpointed what would become one of the defining issues of my life. The astrologer even pinpointed the fact that my medical condition would not affect both eyes equally, and that my right eye would have more problems.

This blog exists because I now take care of my eyesight and in doing so I am learning how to live.