Your medical situation sounds almost exactly like mine when I was a teenager. I was born with glaucoma, had the cataracts, over thirty surgeries etc. etc. etc. I also had an eye that stopped doing me any good and was only a source of pain. I can’t give you any perfect or easy answers, but I will pretend like I’m getting the chance to tell my teenage self what I wish I could have known back then.

First, I would imagine that your feelings and worries are totally focused on the state of your eyes right now. This is very understandable, every time you are talking about your eyes with a doctor or family member the conversation is going to be about if your eyes are going to get worse, if the pain is going to go away, and what can be done. I was in the exact same boat back in the day. The number one thing I wish I had known back then was that I should not have been focusing on my eyeballs. Of course, it is impossible to keep from focusing on pain, and I have no words of wisdom for my teenage self about pain.

I’ll go through what ended up happening with my vision and how the experience brought me to where I am today. When I was 15 My one eye had not worked for a long time, and I was spending lots of time in dark rooms with the pain. My doctor removed the eye and I was better off without it. Of course, that eye may have been in a worse state then your bad eye, my doctor was fine with taking it out, and once it was gone I had no regrets. A few years and surgeries later, my vision in my good eye had become worse and worse. When I was 17 I started walking with a long white cane, and I lost all my vision when I was 18. Yes, when I first lost my site it was a little bit difficult, but I was fresh out of high school, I had a life to live, and no tools or understanding of how to live it. I spent 9 months in a training center for blind adults getting a crash course on all the skills I needed to live a productive life. I was brand new to braille, navigating cities with a white cane, using a computer as a blind person, cooking and cleaning as a blind person, etc. I learned all of this, and much more, and went straight to college, where I graduated ahead of schedule. I am now 25, I have a good job, a good home and a wife and cat that I love.

When I look back at the first 18 years of my life, with its countless eye surgeries, I have one major regret. I really wish me and my family had spent less time fighting to keep my vision, and more time preparing me for losing it. I do not know a lot about glaucoma, but everyone I know who had it from a young age lost their vision sooner or later. I am not saying this is true for you, your doctor would know more about that then I would. However, if someone has a good chance of losing vision, they need to be prepared for loosing vision. If ten percent of the resources and effort that went to trying to save my broken eyes had been spent to teach me braille growing up, I would be a much better braille reader. If conversations and prayers and thoughts had been aimed at my living a good life, not saving my vision, it may have felt less like a failure when I lost my vision.

All I’m trying to say is, you do not have to “spend every day with the never-ending worry that one day everything you worked for will be impossible”. However, it is largely up to you to keep that worry from becoming a reality. You need to ask yourself two questions, what are you working for, and how are you working towards it. It is true that there are some jobs that will be hard to do if you have low vision. You mentioned medical school, and yes being a doctor is one of those jobs that will be difficult; I do know of at least one blind doctor, but there are not many. If you are extremely passionate about a medical career you will have to make some hard decisions about if it’s worth pursuing a medical degree. I am not saying that kind of decision will be easy, but it is your decision to make. Vision is a tool to be used in the pursuit of your goals. It can be a useful tool, and not having it could keep you from some goals. However, if your focused is on your vision, you are focusing on tools, not goals.

You say you are feeling hopeless. This is very understandable and natural. Most of the millions of people, who go through what you’re going through, feel that at some point. The question is, what is your hope. If your hoping to both keep your vision and escape the pain, then yes you might have little hope. If your hoping to escape the pain, I believe that can happen. It sounds like you may be at the point soon of removing the one eye; that might go a long way to improving the pain. If your hope is to become a doctor, your hope may be uncertain, but let me say this. Everyone is different, but when I was sixteen I was in no position to know what I was going to do with the rest of my life. At first, I wanted to run a skateboard shop. When I was 17 I wanted to go into music. When I started college, I wanted to be a social worker; by the time I graduated I had changed my major five times, from social work, to mass media, to teaching, to creative writing, and finally to communications. When I first graduated I worked as a social media manager for a nonprofit, I briefly worked in radio, and now I work in I T. Some people know exactly what they want to do from a young age and they never change their plans, but if you do change your career plans you will be in the majority, not the minority.

Now for the second question, how are you working to ensure that one day everything you worked for will not be impossible? Have you asked your doctor to tell you, in an honest way, what you are most likely facing as far as further vision loss, pain etc. I think I had a good doctor, but I wish we had more conversations about what was going to likely happen to my vision. Have you asked what the end goal of keeping your bad eye is? Does your doctor think it is going to provide something that is worth the pain, or is it just about maintaining the status quo? It’s good that you are reaching out to other blind people. I will say that for me the laser surgeries did often hurt my vision, but on the other hand, I am not in pain any more. Have you researched how your vision might impact what your goals are? Have you googled people who have low vision in medical school, have you read about what fields of medicine might be the most practical for someone who has low vision? Have you considered fields that are related to medicine, such as occupational therapy, chiropractic’s etc. these jobs are definitely done by low vision and blind people.

I’m sorry, I don’t know enough about vision stats to know what 20-400 looks like for you, is your vision impacting things in your daily life? If so, how are you working to overcome _this? Do you use magnification soft where on your computer? Do you have any experience with screen reader programs, such as NVDA or JAWS? Have you ever been taught how to use a long white cane?

I’m glad that you have a counselor. What you’re going through is hard, and I understand that, trust me. I hope I have not sounded too harsh, I am just trying to be honest while offering some light at the end of the tunnel. Please feel free to PM me about anything you might need to talk about.

It sucks that you are in that situation. Have you talked to a counsellor about your thoughts regarding removing the eye? What does your doctor recommend?

I had my left eye removed when I was 17 due to pain, but I'd been blind in it since birth, so for me it was a no-brainer. However, after dealing with only a few months of glaucoma issues in my remaining eye, at age 30, I can't imagine dealing with that for years/as a teenager. The constant back and forth and the pain and the emotional ups and downs of it all would be awful.

But you know how much of that you can/are willing to tolerate. Either decision to remove the eye or wait is perfectly valid.

There is something to be said for being able to put all of the hassle and pain and worry and fear behind you so you can start to move on. Even when the outcome isn't what you wanted going into it, having some closure can allow you to start healing and adapting emotionally/mentally.

But at the same time... vision. Really, this comes down to you deciding if the vision you have in the eye now is beneficial enough to fight to keep it.

It's not a decision you have to make right away, though. You can keep fighting a while longer and then say "enough" whenever you want to, so don't stress out over making the decision. You'll know when the time is right, if it comes to that. You don't have to make it on anyone's time or terms but your own.

That sounds terrible friend, I hope for the best.