GABRIELLE DORIA
RHOADS

I cheated on my driver’s test. As I looked down the barrel of the vision testing machine, I saw red. When the administrator asked me what I saw, I told her red. She asked again. Red. She asked again. I realized then that different images were being shown to different eyes, but I was only seeing one of them. I closed my right eye. Green. 

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Sensory impairments are difficult to articulate because we can never experience someone else’s senses. There is little basis for knowing if our experience is shared by others. I misunderstood the severity of my visual impairment, believing that my experience was not uncommon. After my fifth eye surgery, I began to understand that it was.