Point of view

I learned something new about myself this month.

I was at my annual eye exam a couple of weeks ago. The doctor looked at me and said, “You have a bit of a head tilt.” He asked if I ever have my head tilted in photographs.

I just stared at the doctor. The thing is, I always have my head tilted in photographs. Slightly to the left. I’ve noticed it before and thought it was odd, but because I’m often on the right in the picture, I figured I was just leaning toward the person next to me.

My doctor said that I have a bit of “up and down” in one eye, meaning that it doesn’t hold its focus properly in some tests. He sent me home with a prism to do some exercises to see if it could be corrected. (The prism sat on my kitchen counter for two weeks. I did the exercises once, but they gave me a headache.)

For the next two weeks, I was constantly aware of my slightly slanted view of the world. I noticed it when I was driving, or when I was looking in the mirror as I brushed my teeth. When I was at my counselor’s office last week, listening as he discussed something important, I was thinking, Is my head tilted now? Okay, lean to the right. Just lean a little bit to the right…My God, what’s the matter with me?

Monday I had a follow-up appointment. My eye doctor had done some research in the meantime, and he believes I have a “trochlear (fourth) nerve palsy” in my left eye. (He said that the only way to know for sure would be to dissect my eye and look, but that that wasn’t such a good idea. I concurred.) He even showed me some pictures in a medical textbook. The pictures were slightly off-color, making everyone’s eyes and skin appear yellow. The subjects’ eyes were slightly crossed.

My doctor explained that the palsy can be caused by a virus, and asked if I’d ever had measles or mumps. No, but I did have the chicken pox when I was eight. He said that might have been it. The damage to the nerve, whenever it occurred, caused my eye to weaken. My brain compensated by having my head tilt slightly to the left.

My doctor asked me if I have double vision. I said no, because I don’t, but as I was lying in bed that night at home, I realized that when I let my eyes go completely relaxed, I see two images that do not line up vertically. It’s been like that as far back as I can recall, even from childhood. I remember learning as a child that I could control it, moving one of the objects in line with the other until they came into focus as one. I just took it for granted that everyone’s eyes did the same thing.

But now, I begin to suspect that they do not. I suspect that when you, dear reader, are looking at a television or a plant across the room in an unfocused way, you still see only one television or one plant.

This has thrown me into a small identity crisis. Now, not only am I someone out of work who doesn’t want to get another job in the same field but has no idea what she wants to do, I am also someone with a slightly tilted head, someone with possible palsy in one eye. It’s weird.

Yes, I realize that this is a narcissistic pursuit with no constructive outcome: I don’t think my slightly inclined head is going to cause me to solve global hunger or develop alternative fuel sources. I haven’t noticed any new superpowers. But it’s changed my view of the world all the same.