A World Without Color: My Experience Becoming Temporarily Colorblind

Welcome back to Musings of an Arthritic Artist! Today I'm going to be talking about something that was pretty traumatic to me as a child. 

I'm going to be talking about the time I nearly went colorblind. I'm just going to get straight into it. 

Let's get into the post!

King, Alexandria. Musings of an Arthritic Artist. 2021.

When this happened, I was on chemotherapy. The year was either 2010 or 2011. I was about 7 or 8, I think. All of this happened within a decently short period of time, however it felt like forever when I was a child. Let's get into the actual story.

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My mother had taken me to my annual eye appointment. My optometrist had run some tests. In order to check color blindness, she had Ishihara color plates, which are used to test for color blindness. The plates look like this:

Ishihara plate 11 with the number 6

 

Ishihara plate 1 with the number 12

What you're supposed to do is look at the plates (she had a small book) and trace the numbers with your finger. If your color perception is pretty much perfect, you can see the numbers and trace them. I had excelled at this quite a few times, but this time was different. I remember this as if it was yesterday. I had looked at the book and the colors, but when I looked at it, I couldn't see the numbers. The colors themselves were a bit faded. 

I didn't understand what was happening. I traced where I thought the number was, but pretty much every time, I got it wrong. At the end of the appointment, we were told I was going colorblind.

The dosage of medication I was taking at the time was too strong and was making me go colorblind, which I will mention more in a future section. 

After that appointment, I began to really realize my vision. For a little while before, I had noticed my vision was a little off. Colors were a bit faded and I couldn't see them as well. I was only about 7 or 8, so I didn't think much of it. It wasn't until after the appointment that I really began noticing and slightly panicking. 

If I remember correctly, my vision had begun to turn slightly monochromatic. The colors had started to fade. It was as if all the color in the world was slowly being sucked away by a vacuum. It sounds like something out of a children's chapter book, picture book, or TV, but that's how my vision had begun to change. I think it was red-green colorblindness that I was developing. There were patches of gray where color should've been.

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As for the medication thing: I had originally thought when this happened (and my mother did too) that the methotrexate I was taking was causing my colorblindness, but upon researching farther, I have now realized (and concluded) that it was the naproxen I was taking that was causing my colorblindness. 

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There are a lot of things you don't think about until they happen to you or someone you know. That's just how crazy and unpredictable life is. It doesn't even have to be medical related, but in my case it is. I had never given much thought to colorblindness as a child. I don't even know if I knew fully what it was until it began affecting me. 

It's crazy the things you don't think about until they come crashing into your life like an asteroid. 

After this, I developed a fear. It isn't as severe as my other one is (the one about fearing never being able to use my hands again if I overwork them), but it's definitely present. After my vision cleared, and returned to normal, I began to fear becoming colorblind again, especially completely colorblind. I love color. When it comes to my art, color is normally the first thing I rely on. Without color, my art sometimes feels incomplete and unfinished. 

Seeing the world the way I did was a terrifying experience I never want to have to deal with again. It's a feeling that is difficult to explain. 

Nowadays, my vision is pretty good. It isn't perfect since I wear glasses, but I now see colors normally and am no longer colorblind or partially colorblind.

That's it for this post! I hope you enjoyed it! 

See you Thursday, 

Lexi K🖌