Normal, Under Glass

On double vision, bright light, and practicing the drill where it counts

The building at the Anschutz Medical Campus looks like the future decided to major in glass.

When I walked into the MS Summit hosted by the Rocky Mountain MS Center, the first thing I noticed wasn’t the crowd. It was the wall. A massive sheet of windows flooding the room with natural light. Clean. Modern. Optimistic.

I stepped into the main conference room and immediately felt slightly off.

Not dizzy. Not dramatic. Just unsteady. A faint wobble as I scanned the rows for an open seat. The kind of imbalance you try to rationalize away — maybe I stood up too fast, maybe I’m dehydrated, maybe it’s nothing. I kept walking, careful but casual, pretending nothing was wrong.

The projector screen sat slightly left of center. The speaker stood in the middle.

By the time I found a seat and settled in, the subtle wobble had turned into something harder to ignore.

And within minutes, my brain split her in two.

The bright exterior light pouring through the glass and the dimmer PowerPoint screen created a high-contrast battlefield my eyes could not win. My balance slipped further. Subtle, but unmistakable. The kind of sway you hide by gripping the armrest.

Then the double vision built on itself.

Less than an hour into the first presentation, I couldn’t tell where the speaker actually was. Two versions of her drifted in my field of view like poorly aligned transparencies. If I stood up, I risked falling.

Outwardly, I looked fine. A healthy young guy in a conference seat. I could have been a researcher. A supportive spouse. Someone tagging along.

Inside, I was doing math.

How do I get up at the break?

How do I walk out of here without someone noticing?

What if I actually fall?

The panic wasn’t about seeing double.

It was about standing.

I suddenly wasn’t sure I could support myself on my own two feet. The narrow walkway between seats — something I hadn’t even registered when I walked in — now looked like an obstacle course. I pictured the break: chairs scraping back, people standing, casual conversations beginning. And me, having to navigate that corridor without betraying the fact that my balance had quietly evaporated.

That realization frankly terrified me.

And then the irony hit me.

Here I was, at a major MS summit — a room designed for education, empowerment, shared experience — and I was having a full-blown pseudo-relapse in the middle of it. Surrounded by neurologists, researchers, advocates, and people living visibly with the disease, and I was silently fighting my own nervous system under a wall of glass.

Of all places.

Part of me almost wanted to laugh at the absurdity. The other part wanted to disappear.

Tears welled up. Not from sadness. From fear. From the sharp awareness that gravity suddenly felt less negotiable.

I faked a nose wipe. Dug a tissue out of my bag and pressed it to my face like I had a cold. Performance art for survival.

Then I closed my eyes.

At first, I just wanted the episode to disappear. That magical thinking phase where you bargain with neurons. But something else surfaced instead.

What if I practiced?

For months I’d been experimenting with my own version of Brock String therapy — a vision training drill that forces both eyes to cooperate under load. You hold a string with beads at varying distances and train your brain to converge and diverge with intention. It’s humbling. It exposes misalignment instantly. It rewards patience, not force.

So I did a conference-room version.

Eyes closed. Seven to ten slow breaths. Controlled inhale. Controlled exhale. Nothing heroic. Just lowering the voltage.

I opened my eyes and focused on my thumb in my hand. One object. Close. Stable.

Then I looked at the back of the head in front of me.

Then the next row.

Then the next.

I let my gaze step outward in increments. Like racking focus on a camera lens.

Then — slowly — I shifted my eyes to the right. Toward the speaker. I kept breathing. I didn’t chase clarity. I invited it.

The two speakers began to fuse.

Not dramatically. Not instantly.

But enough.

I held the image steady and moved to the PowerPoint screen. The slide stabilized. The room stopped spinning.

I could see again.

The irony remained — and it matured into something else.

The summit wasn’t protecting me from symptoms. It was exposing them. Bright light. High contrast. Competing focal planes. A perfect stress test for a visual system that already runs hot.

I wasn’t tired that day. I’d slept well. What I was learning about my version of MS is this: my visual system is my early warning system. It doesn’t need exhaustion to flare. Sometimes it just needs the right environment.

It’s not weakness. It’s bandwidth.

The brainstem pathways that coordinate eye movement are small, precise, and unforgiving when irritated. Add glare and contrast, and you’re asking an already sensitive network to perform ballet in a strobe light.

I’ve never been a good dancer anyway — just ask my wife.

But here’s the part that matters.

I didn’t leave.

I didn’t spiral.

I practiced.

I treated the environment like a training ground instead of a threat. The same way I rehab a tight hip flexor with resistance bands. The same way I step under a barbell knowing load reveals asymmetry. The same way I use a Brock String to force my eyes to cooperate under tension.

There’s something almost philosophical about it. MS doesn’t just test strength. It tests composure. It exposes where control is illusion and where control is skill.

I can’t command my nervous system to behave perfectly. But I can influence it.

Breath.

Focus.

Gradual load.

That day, in a room built of glass and light, I realized something quietly important.

It’s ironic to have a relapse at a summit dedicated to managing the disease.

But maybe that’s the point.

You don’t practice resilience in isolation.

You practice it right where the symptoms show up.