Seeing clearly

Some fears make sense.

One of my worst fears is something I actually think is quite normal and healthy: losing my eyesight.

I'm terrified that someday, something will happen to those two squishy little orbs inside my head and I won't be able to tell what's happening out in the world.

Even touching my eye gives me the willies. It feels like tempting fate.

Tuesday night I met someone who encountered my worst fear and lived to laugh about it.

On July 4 of this year, Tom Binnie was doing something he'd done many times before. A volunteer firefighter and certified pyrotechnics operator, Binnie was helping put on the annual fireworks display at the city park in Marble Hill, Mo.

Everything was going splendidly. The colors were popping, children were oohing and ahhing and everyone was feeling a special mixture of patriotism and pyromania.

And the grand finale was going to be the kicker. One box of 30 shells designed to gloriously batter the ear drums of everybody in the ZIP code.

But something went wrong. As Tom bent down and extended a 3-foot-long device akin to a road flare, one shell misfired.

It screeched out of the box and veered to hit him squarely in the left eye.

The impact knocked him down and blew the safety glasses off his face. No one ever found them after the accident.

Tom's wife, Joan, was soon on the scene.

"He was conscious, but I knew he was injured," she said. "He was laying on the ground, and you can see he has a scar from his eyebrow to his cheekbone that you could pretty much lay a golf ball in, so I knew it was bad."

He was quickly transferred to Saint Francis Medical Center and began the long process of getting back to normal.

Several days after the accident when his eyelids could be pried open, his vision in that eye registered 5/2000. He could see faint blobs and vaguely sense when his environment changed from dark to light, but little more.

Doctors couldn't say whether he'd ever improve.

In August he had Lasik surgery to repair a wrinkle in his cornea. His vision improved to 20/140, meaning he could see shapes but they were "fuzzy and out of focus."

And for a while it looked like that would be the extent of Tom's recovery. He thought he'd never return to his job as an EMT for Cape County Ambulance. The job demands a vision test he could never pass.

Tom couldn't do much more than wait. He thought about pursuing a nursing degree that would at least keep him in the medical field.

But just two weeks ago, Tom's doctors tried something new. They performed a surgery to remove some cataracts from his eye.

They told him it would likely have minimal impact on his vision, but could help brighten things up a bit.

Miraculously, the day after the procedure, Tom's vision was back. A test showed it had improved all the way to 20/40.

He took the required test and went right back to work as an EMT. Tuesday was his first day back on the job.

And believe it or not, he says come next Independence Day, he'll be setting off fireworks again for the show.

I guess fear isn't a word he uses too often.

TJ Greaney is a staff reporter for the Southeast Missourian.