One night in the fifth grade I remember running into my mothers room to tell her about an assignment I did well on. She had come back from a 12-hour shift at the hospital and she was excited to see my brothers and I. When I finished telling her about my grade I noticed she was tired so I asked if I could blow out her candles, which she always lit every night. My mother is a very cautious person, especially with dealing with trauma and emergency patients at her hospital, so blowing out a candle or going anywhere near fire at a young age was a big deal in her eyes. Reluctantly she said yes and I was so excited, seeing as I was the baby and small for my age I never really got to do much on my own.

As I went to blow out the candle I remember vividly my mom saying, “don’t give me a reason to go back to the hospital”, and then I blew. Needless to say I blew too hard and the wick from the candle blew back into my eye causing me to have a corneal abrasion. Obviously my mother spoke to soon, and jumped up as she saw me cradling my eye. Rushing back to the hospital I was vaguely aware of what was going on. My mother took care of me patched me and was overly attentive. The rest of that night is still hard to remember.

However, a few days later I do remember being sensitive to light, had some blurred vision and some of the things I viewed with my right eye were distorted. From my perceptions class I realized that my visual activity was distorted a little. My retinal ganglion cells in response to spatial frequency weren’t cohesive. Because of the damage and my cornea repairing itself, my vision acuity was off. Shapes and objects were off in my vision if they were too far away because the edge of an object produces single stripes and can be blurred but shadows in a retinal image. The visual system breaks down images into different parts and this caused for my eye to not be able to focus well until it was healed. After a week or so my vision was back to normal and my ophthalmologist said my eyesight was back to normal and my astigmatism wasn’t as sever any more. Even though this story is embarrassing and at the age of 21 my mom still wont let me blow out a candle, its nice to know what happened with my vision all those years ago and that my vision did improve if only slightly.