As many of you know, about a year ago I had brain surgery. A nice man spent about nine hours puddling around in my noodle to remove a large, benign Vienna sausage I was growing which was putting pressure on my optic nerve and trying to make me blind. The surgery was very successful. There’s nothing like having a really good mechanic when you need one. In addition to putting pressure on my optic nerve the mass was tangled up with my third cranial nerve. That’s the nerve that governs the muscles that control movement of the eye. After the surgery I had double vision producing images that were about 4 feet apart. The surgeon said this would be the case after surgery due to aggravating the nerve while removing the tumor. He also said that things would improve with time, which they did.
About two months after surgery my vision was much improved and I’d only have a little double vision in the evenings when I was tired. But what I did have was pretty significant vertigo at times. If I bent over more than a couple of times a day, I’d be on a merry-go-round for several days after. If I saw something shiny, a mirror, a polished floor, a rain-covered sidewalk, I’d suddenly have no idea where the ground was and would be riding on a roller coaster. It was a real problem and severely curtailed what I could do in my life.
My sweet wife has, throughout this year, been urging me to go to an optometrist and get some glasses. She switched from readers to a real pair of bi-focal lenses years ago and has been very happy. Like all good wives, she wanted me to be happy too; so she continued to beat that drum regularly whenever I was looking for my readers. Finally, I admitted that she was probably right and we made an appointment with the optometrist. As long as we were talking about eyeballs, I told him about the surgery, double vision and vertigo and he started doing his measurements and testing.
When he was finished, he said “Doc, you don’t just have double vision in the evening when you’re tired. You have it all the time and are constantly correcting for it with micro movements of the eyes. Your vertigo is very likely due to that inconsistency of your visual field. In other words, you can’t properly focus on what you’re trying to look at because the image keeps moving“. He then prescribed some glasses with prismatic lenses that would redirect the focal point of both eyes to the same spot.
The glasses came about a week later. When I put them on, my world completely changed. Not only could I see a little better and read a book without putting on readers, but I had zero double vision and zero vertigo. I could bend over and pick something up off the floor whenever I wanted. I could ride in a car at night without the oncoming headlights dancing all over. I could walk past a mirror or a pane of glass without feeling like I was on a roller coaster. It was amazing. Two small pieces of glass had completely changed my life.
And how did they do it?
By correcting my focus!
Proper focus is a game changer in life. These days there are countless distractions demanding our attention. Sadly, many of those things are completely worthless diversions. As a culture, we spend hours with our noses pressed to our phone screens hoping beyond hope that our last social media post is getting enough “likes”. We watch and re-watch movies, TV shows and YouTube videos that do us no more good than turning off our brains for a few hours (or a lot of hours!).
If time were money (it is actually…but that’s another blog article) would we spend it the way we do? If we were to formulate a budget for the expenditure of moments and hours in a given day, how much would we be willing to dedicate to superficial nonsense that provides no return on our investment?
If I’ve learned anything these past couple of years from my brush with severe incapacity, it’s that life is precious. Time is precious. Opportunity for growth and development is precious.
So, we each have a choice to make. It’s a choice we make over and over, all day every day. What will I do with my time?
Will I pick up my laptop and veg out for a few hours?
Or will I pick up my laptop and learn something really important?
Will I pick up my phone and spend the evening zoned out on social media?
Or will I pick up my phone and call someone to see how they’re doing and tell them I love them?
Will I anxiously watch to see what happens on a reality TV show?
Or will I have a little actual reality learning to do something fun with my kids?
Buy a ukulele and learn to play it. Study a language. Learn to cook gnocchi. Read a classic. Spend some time in meditation and prayer.
Think.
Act.
Become.
If you’re tired of spending your time on things of no import, and are looking for something meaningful to learn and do, think about getting connected to the amazing, healing and nourishing plants that are all around you. Think how much of a blessing you could be to others as a teacher and a healer or as a mentor and friend.
If the apocalypse comes along, will your family and friends be more blessed if you know how to feed and heal them with plants from the garden or from the vacant lot down the street or if you know who won each season of some reality TV show?
Life is short. Time is a limited commodity. I encourage you to focus on things that matter. Focus on developing your talents and skills. Focus on things that can bless others.
I hope more of us can get off the rollercoaster of life caused by “double vision”. I hope that we can discover the power of the “prismatic lenses” of self-assessment and real analysis of what matters most. I hope we can clarify what we and those we love need most and how we can course correct to follow a more productive path.
If herbal medicine is something you’d like to focus more on, I’d love to join you in that pursuit. It’s an amazing journey and well worth the time.
-Doc Jones
If you’re ready to change your focus to something important, consider joining our online program:
Don’t forget we’re hosting a live event next weekend (June 24-25, 2022) in Idaho, Learn More Here:
Thank you for your inspired message!
Glad you enjoyed it Kathy.
Wonderful article! I have to confess to too much time on a game I like and not enough time with my new dog that’s in training. So I’m going to commit to more time having fun with her and less on that computer game. Thanks for the wake up 🙂
Few things are nicer than a well-trained dog. Sounds like a good time investment to me. :0)
She will be soooo happy to have you train, play & love her. There is nothing like a dogs love!!!
SO very happy for you and your wise wife!!!
Learning to listen to a wise wife is one of the great life lessons for a man to learn. Some of us are a little slow. LOL
Doc, if your insights were viewed/articulated by mainstream media, we would have a much better society. God bless you more and more!
Thank you Dr Jones you inspire me God bless you.
The media often seems a bit too focused on agenda rather than unbiased information.
thank you for the inspiration
Thanks for taking the time to read it. :0)
This is why I picked your program over any other one. I always feel the truthfulness of what you say. I’m thankful for the help you have gotten so that I could study with you in your program. You truly inspire.
I’m glad you’re enjoying the school Susan.
I am so ever impressed by you. It is a joy to read and learn from you. God bless. Thank you.
Vickie, you’re very kind. I’m glad you’re enjoying the posts.
As always you are a beacon of healthy living.
Well…I’m pretty good at living. But I’m guessing there are some that could argue the “Healthy” bit at times. LOL
You are amazing to do all you do and to be so encouraging while going through your own “un-fun” health stuff! You really are a bright spot and uplifter. Thank you for your message and reminders here!
Through experience I’ve found there are two ways to respond to trials and traumas in life. One is to be miserable and suffer and gain nothing from the experience but pain. The other is to be willing and anxious to learn the amazing things the Lord can teach us because of that miserable experience and press on having been truly blessed by it.
A great read, thanks Doc! I deleted all my social media during covid, too dark! I was joyful & grateful being alive to focus on all good things.
I have a Facebook page. I look at it about every 18 months whether it needs it or not. I always come away feeling like I just gave up 10 minutes of my life I can never get back. LOL
Doc, I’m so glad those glasses stopped the spinning for you…vertigo is an awful feeling.
I hope your eyes heal further as time goes by, and any other damage from that tumor as well.
Sorry you had to go through that.
Thank you for teaching from that difficult experience.
The past year or so have been amazingly challenging. But I wouldn’t have missed it. I learned some important things I couldn’t have learned in any other way. Having brain surgery and riding a roller coaster for a year was a small price to pay for what I’ve gained personally.
Life is hard. God is Good.
PS
Sometimes I contemplate tossing both my phone and computer to the wind, and going back to the days of reading books and writing letters.
Phones and computers are just tools. We can use those tools to stuff our brains and souls with digital Twinkies and ruin our lives. Or we can use those tools to learn amazing things, and reach out to folks that need real connection. That connection doesn’t come from social media posts. It comes from real phones calls, or an email or text directed to a single soul we love. Imagine how different the world would be if every effort currently made on meaningless social media posts was actually put into meaningful, one-on-one communications about things that matter. Imagine the impact we could have if we called the lonely little old lady down the street and told her we were thinking about her instead of wasting our time waving our digital pompoms so that thousands of strangers would know we’re on the right political team.
A few weeks ago, I bought a bunch of books and decided to DELETE most of the “urgent” news items that come into my e-mail boxes on a regular basis and do more reading of the things I CHOOSE to read, not just what I get bombarded with. This message reinforced my decision. I have SO MANY good books waiting for me, plus Homegrown Herbalist School stuff – which is hard since I’m off-grid with extremely limited data, meaning I usually have to go sit somewhere (outside our local library or other free wifi source) to access the lectures. (Daylight hours are work hours…)
Thank you for reminding me to consciously choose how I spend my time. In 30 years, I will not care about most of the news items that come streaming in. I will never be able to keep up with them all anyway, so why even try…?
There are few things more important or wonderful than really good books. :0)
What a great post Doc. So very happy you are seeing clearly again. I can’t imagine what that would be like. And the beautiful tie in to FOCUS. Boy do I continually need a reminder of this every day. Thank you. God bless.
I think we all need to regularly remind ourselves where we want to be headed and how to get there. As we drive down the freeway of life, we have to make constant, sometimes very small, course corrections. We need to keep our eyes on the prize and our hands on the steering wheel or. sooner or later, we’ll end up in the ditch. :0)
Great narrative Doc and thank you for sharing. Now you know pirates wore eyepatches. They got knocked in the head and woke up seeing double. The third cranial nerve is delicate and long connecting to the midbrain. It also controls 4 of the six muscles that control eyeball movement. Eyeballs must be perfectly synchronized in order to obtain fusion of the two images seen by the brain. The brain doesn’t like double vision and the result is blurry vision, vertigo and various other vestibular offenses. Sorry you had to go through that before seeing an Optometrist but now you know why Pirates wore patches!
The funniest thing is that I spoke to three different neurosurgeons about it and they all responded that it often happens and sometimes goes away after a few years. They were a bit too focused on their own tools to be aware that the optometrist at Wal-Mart could fix it today. Lack of focus is a serious problem, but sometimes too much focus on one thing can limit progress as well. LOL
I did consider the eye patch but with parrot prices being what they are and the inconvenience wearing a cutlass all the time, I decided to just stay on the merry go round.
I looked online at Alibris for any of your used books. They didn’t have one! That alone says those who buy your books keep them.
As we age (you’ll get there one day), our bodies revolt. I’m adult ADHD, but my body now says ‘Oh &*^% NO!’ The local saw bones gives out pills like candy. That’s why I don’t go to him. The Bible says God gave us every green herb for a reason. Thank you for discovering the reason. Keep researching and please focus on eye health.
This was a wonderful & timely post. My husband struggles with Ménière’s disease. It’s really changed his life. He’s an organic farmer & the constant crickets chirping sound in his ears & loss of balance, has made farming much harder. Wish there was a special tincture he could take to make it all go away. I’m going to make an eye appt. for him asap.
I’m new to all things Doc Jones! I’m learning soooo much. Thank you!!!
Already blessed beyond measure by your YouTube videos. We’ve had ORGANIC “weeds” right out our back door for years. So much to learn….
I hope your husband gets to feeling better.
I have a formula I’ve used on some vertigo cases. Sometimes it helps. Sometimes it doesn’t. There are lots of variables there. Shoot me an email and I’ll send you the recipe for the formula if you like.
https://homegrownherbalist.net/contact-us/