[humanser] news

[JD Townsend]

Another news story about a blind psychotherapist.  This one a bit of melodrama, but with a positive ending paragraph.


  The Day My World Went Dark.
By ELEANOR LEW.  I was watching Diane Sawyer on the evening news, 
wondering how she manages year after year to look so young, when 
suddenly her face disappeared.  Now you see.  Now you don't.  One 
second.  That's all it took.  A dense black inkblot shaped like a 
map of England and southern Norway suddenly blocked my view of 
Diane so that all I could see was her blond hair and shoulders.  
At first, I thought it was the television set.  Changing channels 
didn't bring her face back, nor did rubbing my eyes.
'It's permanent vision loss1' my ophthalmologist said.  'Your 
optic nerve and retina buckled.
He drew a picture of the inside of my right eye, the affected 
one, and explained that my degenerative myopia, an inherited 
condition that is far less common than ordinary nearsightedness 
but still a leading cause of blindness worldwide, had caused my 
eyeball to elongate excessively.  It looked like a house whose 
walls had been stretched so thin that the roof caved.
The doctor didn't say much else, didn't make any recommendations 
for physical or oc'cup'ational therapy, didn't tell me to call 
him if I noticed any changes.  I left his office shaken.  'What 
if it happens in my other eye? What if..."
In the weeks that followed, I began to notice bizarre changes in 
my right eye.  Frequent flashing lights, like a dying neon tube, 
sometimes flickering color or bright white light, so intense I 
swore I could hear them buzz.  I observed my peripheral vision 
diminishing.  England and Norway morphed into a large, bushy oak 
tree with a short and wide trunk.  At a park, I came upon 
children playing.  When I covered my good eye with my hand, I 
could see only a sliver of sky, and legs and shoes of children 
running in and out of the tree.
I wrote off the psychedelic changes to the 'buckling' and didn't 
bother to call my ophthalmologist.  But I was scared and needed 
help.
Calling around, I found little help for the 'partly sighted' 
until a friend told me to call Ashby Village, one of about 120 
'villages' that have been established throughout the country to 
help seniors live independently in their own homes.  That's how I 
found Thelma Elkins, a 90-year-old former social worker who had 
just founded a support group for those losing their vision.
Thelma and the group have become my lifeline, a place where we 
can share notes about the newest research and talk about the 
anger and fears that at times overwhelm us.  At the beginning, a 
few members didn't see the necessity of opening up and talking 
about feelings.  They left the group.  The rest of us understood 
the importance of staying connected to others, of countering the 
isolation that declining vision brings.
Together we grieve the death of the independent life we used to 
live and voice the anguish of being trapped at home, no longer 
able to drive.  One member talked about feeling outraged that his 
doctor didn't have time to talk about a vitamin regimen called 
AREDS2 that might slow the progression of macular degeneration.  
Another told of the terror she felt when a hallucination of large 
tropical flowers popped up in front of her eyes while she was 
driving, a phenomenon called Charles Bonnet syndrome that is 
caused by the brain's efforts to compensate for vision loss.  We 
provide comfort when a member recalls his panic after becoming 
lost in a crowd in a large Greek port and not being able to 
remember the cruise ship's name.  What we really share is hope.
As I nonchalantly described the creeping reduction in my 
peripheral vision to my group, a couple of them urged me to call 
my doctor and get an appointment for the next day.  I did.  My 
ophthalmologist's eyebrows lifted as he assessed the changes.  He 
suspected wet macular degeneration, caused by abnormal blood 
vessel growth, was contributing to my vision problems and he 
called my retinologist's office.
My first eye injection came next.  The retinologist adjusted my 
chair until it was in a horizontal position, clamped my eyelid to 
keep it from blinking and then said, 'Look down and to the left! 
He carefully inserted a hypodermic needle full of medication into 
my numbed eyeball.  He said I was lucky because the medication, 
which came on the market in 2006, stops the bleeding and 
vascularization.
I felt a prick and noticed a tiny floating water bubble, the 
medication, and then it burst in my field of vision.  The world 
turned purple, and I felt slightly faint for a few seconds.  My 
doctor reached out his hand to shake mine, saying, 'I'll see you 
again in four weeks.
The medication is working its magic, and the old oak tree has 
shrunk back to its original shape of England and Norway.  I have 
more peripheral vision.  Every day when I wake up, I check to see 
that my good eye is still inkblot free and that England and 
Norway are still the same size.
I still have a hard time talking to friends about my condition 
because I am scared I will make them feel uncomfortable and drive 
them away.  I read an article written by a blind woman about how 
people assume that she can't possibly be intelligent.  They 
sometimes shout at her, assuming that she's also deaf.  My 
support group has helped me practice sharing my story with 
others.
Recently, I accompanied a blind man I had met at the Oakland 
Lions Center for the Blind to the BART station.  When my new 
friend and I got on the train, his white cane, signifying his 
blindness, prompted four people to offer their seats so fast that 
I could feel the wind from their movements.  We took two of those 
vacated seats.  I was happy to note the power of the white cane.  
If and when it is time for me to use one, I will be ready.
Eleanor Lew is a marriage and family therapist and practices in 
Berkeley and Emeryville, Calif.


JD Townsend LCSW
Helping the light dependent to see.
Daytona Beach, Earth, Sol System
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