Keratoconus, or carrot-in-anus as one of my friends supportively calls it.. is a progressive eye condition that can rapidly turn your vision into utter dogshit. Pardon my french. The cornea warps & vision distorts in ways glasses can’t fix. It starts by text ghosting a little, lights get halos, and I just kept thinking it’s nothing. By the time I had an actual diagnosis I’d already started dreading sitting at my desk.

Since grade 9 tech was everything to me. Computer programming, cybersecurity, video editing, gaming, content creation etc. I had projects going constantly. Sitting in front of a screen for hours wasn’t something I had to push myself to do, it was just what I did.

Then my eyes started going and it kind of took all of that with it.

The first time I knew something was actually wrong was in 2021. I was 26, living in Saint John, NB, writing JS/React in VS Code. I’d been away from home for a months and I remember sitting there staring at my macbook screen thinking the code looked weird — ghosted, doubled, like my eyes weren’t agreeing on what they were seeing. I figured I was tired or needed a new prescription. I kept going. That was kind of the beginning of a very slow, very bad realization.

When I got back home I was diagnosed with KC. They told me about my options, none of which were “You’ll get your old vision completely restored” & I got clinically depressed. Two years of it. Because losing access to screens when my whole identity lives on screens is a specific kind of grief that’s hard to explain to people who don’t get it. I stopped working on personal projects. Stopped making content. I’d open my laptop and just… stare at the desktop… noticing all of the imperfections in my vision. I stopped gaming too. Nothing brought me joy. Driving become scary, and when I was out I couldn’t even recognize peoples faces anymore. They were all just blurs. If there were lights above peoples heads, they would stream down and overlap whatever I was trying to look at. This was my life now. I hated it.

I work in cybersecurity now so it’s not like it destroyed everything. But that feeling of just losing yourself in a project for hours without thinking about your eyes — I don’t have that anymore. I never will. Still figuring out how to be okay with that one. Maybe hydromorphone? Kidding..