Here's What It's Like To See Colors For The First Time in My Life

On Tuesday as part of celebrating my birthday, our host and co-host surprised me with Dr. Bruce from Richie Eye Clinic to see if I could see color with Enchroma glasses.

I've been colorblind my whole life. I actually didn't learn I was until I was in 7th grade learning about genetics, and I learned I had failed the colorblindness test in front of all my peers. After lots of questions about "What color is this?" "What color is that?", I realized it wasn't a big deal.

Colorblindess never affected my daily life. I was only partially colorblind, and it would only occasionally come up when I put on mismatched clothes or can't see something clearly.

After taking a short test on the Enchroma website, Dr. Bruce fitted me with a specific pair of glasses for my type of colorblindness. With the first pair, I had a small response, but it wasn't that different. He switched out the glasses with a new pair that were WAY more effective.

The experience of what I saw is hard to describe, but I'll do my best. I found out I have a red deficiency, so after wearing the glasses, everything that was red, or had red in it (pinks and purples), it was as if someone shined a spotlight on it. Not only did those colors look brighter, they were more vivid and intense.

The doctor handed me a Pantone book with lots of shades of colors, and while looking through the pages I saw blends of colors and colors I hadn't really seen before. I pulled the glasses on and off to see before and afters and without glasses all the shades of purple were more brown and gray, and with the glasses on they were so vivid and I could actually tell them apart. This is the part that is hard to explain. The page went from squares that all looked similar or the same to a page where I could finally be differences and blends that I never saw.

Throughout the day I was walking around taking them on and off, realizing that for my whole life everything was just duller and more "blah"

Thank you to Hunter, Mollie, Dr Bruce and the entire Richie Eye Clinic for all their help


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