I lied: I�m not 90% back
I can blog, yes, but only slowly � and I certainly can�t keep up with everything I used to.

I can type pretty well, but that doesn�t help me much: My output is necessarily restricted by my tremendously slowed input. I'm not taking in new things to talk about very quickly. My workplace, for good reasons, has a television with a news channel on 24 hours � but I�m not there. I don�t even have cable at home. Newspapers are difficult. I can reformat text on my computer to make it easier to read � but it takes time. And many pages (like my own, ironically) use CSS and don�t allow easy font resizing.

What�s wrong with me?

Well, my eyes are fine. I know this because I just had the most comprehensive neural/ophthalmological exam I�ve ever had. It�s not my eyes: It�s the blood in my brain pressing against nerves.

Everybody has a blind spot: It�s no big deal, the place where your optic nerve joins your retina, producing a gap that (if you noticed it) would be about the relative size of a penny held at arm�s length. Your brain is very clever, though: It extrapolates around the spot to present you with an unbroken field of vision. You don�t even notice your blind spot unless you perform a specially-designed exercise to draw your attention to it.

At the moment, I have a blind spot that covers one third to one half of my field of vision.

Again, because the brain extrapolates so well, as incredible as it sounds, I don�t usually notice it. The ophthalmologist made me see it by the simple expedient of having me focus on a spot on a piece of graph paper and asking me if there appeared to be any gaps in the grid.

Good God Almighty. Most of the right side of it was gone.

It�s not that I can�t process written language anymore, I just can�t see it. My usable visual field is so narrow that the whole word won�t fit. It�s like trying to read a billboard from three feet away. I�m writing this, and reading what I�m writing, by using a two-and-a-half inch horizontal margin and 10-point type. Anything larger and I can�t see the whole word at once.

In a way, this is a relief. The therapists at the rehab clinic were having me read large-print children�s books, and I was struggling through them painfully. I sounded, well, brain-damaged, and I felt hopeless. Reading is my favorite hobby, and if I can�t do it anymore� I was beginning to think maybe I belonged in the basket-weaving classes after all.

And the first clue came from dumb luck. In a desperate attempt to find some age-appropriate reading material (the rehab clinic has a lot of facilities, but no library: that says something about what they think of the intellectual level of their patients), the therapist bought me a newspaper. (It also says something that she had to scrounge for the fifty cents, because the center doesn�t subscribe to one.)

So here I am, with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, staring blankly at the front page. God help me if I am intellectually stymied by the AJC.

The headlines I could stagger through with difficulty, if at all. I noticed, though, that the text of the stories was easier to manage. Only proper names, especially unfamiliar ones, stumped me completely.

The therapist, bless her, realized we were onto something, and had me turn to an interior page � as it happened, an op-ed page featuring an analysis of the recent primary election, specifically the defeat of Congressional incumbent Cynthia McKinney at the hands of newcomer Denise Majette. It was relatively small print in a relatively narrow space line.

I rolled right through it. Halleluiah!