Day 73 Seeing is Believing

Sometimes, we take things on faith, sometimes taking something on faith is the last thing we think we'll do.  Faith is sometimes described as being hopeful for something you can't see, taste, feel, or hear.

I've had to get a number of shots in my eyes (and yes, it is possible to see the needle coming).  I usually get these shots after m eye doctor has looked at a photographs of the inside of my eye.

Think about that for a minute.  I get pictures taken of the inside of my eye.

These images let him know if there is swelling of my macula. Getting the photographs requires my eyes be dilated and that I hold them still while I look at a small blue light. A number of photos are taken and then compiled. 

Photo by: By Jmarchn - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37895270

The final result looks like an eerie black and white moonscape with a dip in the center.  The surface is usually a thin powdery white line and below it is what reveals potential problems. This part of the macula is gray and has a spongy type appearance and pockets of fluid of varying sizes might be seen.   When the pockets are large, there is swelling in the macula and it flattens the dip. 


When the dip is flattened, a person's vision is impacted.  Once upon a time there was no treatment and eventually a person lost their ability to see.  Today, there is a treatment. The doctor will inject the eye with  a prostate cancer drug called Avastin.

My eye doctor could tell me about this, but he elects instead to show me. From the second set of images that were taken he has compared each eye to the image taken before so I can have a standard by which I can see improvement or decline. Seeing gives support to what he tells me and that leads to belief.

This proof is what allows me to accept the treatment plan he wants to use on my eye(s). At the time of the injection, I can't see the medicine nor can I watch it go to work. I only know that when I go back for my follow up exam and more photos are taken of my macula I can see what the injection has done.

The same holds true for every medicine we take. The "proof is in the pudding" we may say as we await results.

Sometimes the proof has already arrived and we haven't even realized it.  Today, to get ready for the injections I took a relaxant. 

I had totally forgotten about the relaxant, and especially some of the side effects it caused.  It wasn't until I had been itching about fifteen minutes that I remembered the medication caused me to itch. The prescription was working, doing its job behind the scenes, which I had trusted it to do. I believed it would do the job based on past experiences and still, I had physical evidence as well.

People get told to take things on faith and some find this hard to do.  We need to recognize that we believe a lot of things because we have seen the results and have trusted the outcome.  We've done it so often that we don't question, just accept the results.

Think about how many things you've seen and you believe because of your experiences.  You put keys in the ignition of your car and turn the engine over, believing and trusting this is going to happen because it has happened thousands of other times. We trust the pharmacist to fill our prescriptions correctly, we trust the very air we inhale is oxygen based.

Seeing in its own right is a form of believing.  We need to take heed though that we don't mismatch the evidence we think we have for the item or belief we think it goes with.  For instance, my evidence is itching.  It came after the injections. Am I itching because of the narcotic I took earlier, or because of the Avastin? I have a pretty good idea based on past experiences, but it isn't concrete proof.

Thomas didn't believe Jesus had risen until he saw Jesus with the nail prints in his hands. A police officer is not going to believe you are licensed until he sees your driving license. 

We take a lot of things on faith. The pharmacist, the pilot, the test result.  Perhaps we should put the same sort of believe into ourselves and our neighbors.