Zaidman #AtoZChallenge

So, what is a Zaidman, and why am I writing about it?

It's not a thing - it's a person.  It's Z time - time for the letter Z, and the end of the Blogging from A to Z Challenge.

Today's post is a tribute to eyesight.  We take it for granted, but not everyone is granted eyesight.

Some of you may have seen the video of a baby in Seattle with a rare eye condition.  A video camera catches the minute little Leo, being treated by an eye specialist in Los Angeles, has special glasses put on his head and his first experience with seeing clearly.

It's not the first time I've seen glasses like that, though.

Earlier this month, my spouse and I sat with my mother in law in the office of Dr. Gerald Zaidman, an eye specialist in Westchester County, a suburb of New York City.

As we waited (and waited) for my mother in law to be seen by Dr. Zaidman, we saw a number of patients called in ahead of us.

One of them, a toddler, had been playing a game on a tablet before she was called. She was holding it right up to her nose. Her mother (I assume it was her mother) sat with her patiently.

Another little girl, perhaps a preschooler, announced to the entire waiting room "I love all of you!" as the staff smiled.  One offered her a lollypop.

One of the patients was a baby, and he was wearing glasses that looked like the glasses little baby Leo was wearing.  I could only imagine what that baby, and his parents (both accompanied him), had already been through.  I overheard the mother tell the person sitting next to them that their baby would have his next cataract surgery in three weeks.

As for that long wait - Dr. Zaidman had handled one emergency already, and was being called away to another one.  He is obviously in great demand.

Too many of us take our sight for granted.  I have poor uncorrected vision (I have been legally blind without corrective lenses since around age seven or eight) and used to go annually to an eye specialist at Flower Fifth Avenue Hospital in Manhattan until I was a teenager.  But I am fortunate - my vision has always been correctable.  And perhaps it always will be.  For me, my poor vision only lasts until I can reach my glasses.  But, as I sat there in Dr. Zaidman's waiting room, I thought about my childhood vision for the first time in years- what if I had been one of those children in that waiting room, back 60 plus years ago?

Other bloggers I have read have much greater challenges with vision than I have, and face their challenges with great courage (and, for many, faith in a higher power that helps them to find that courage).  These bloggers, such as blogger Amy Bovaird, are well worth reading.

I hope that the efforts and vision of doctors like Dr. Zaidman and others will eventually make vision challenges a thing of the past.

Thank you for reading my blog during the A to Z Blogging Challenge.   Tomorrow, I return to my normal blogging schedule.