Most of you probably know I was born blind and that I transferred here at the start of last semester. My life has changed in many unexpected ways recently, both as a result of coming to this school and because of an experimental operation I had a few months ago to potentially give me eyesight.
Today I have a wonderful girlfriend who has shown me how to appreciate the burning skies of dawn and dusk, I have parents who have patiently helped me learn shapes and colors, and I have amazing friends who have taught me to recognize everything from mountains to canyons to casinos. And as a bonus, the operation went even better than I could have hoped. My next goal is reading. By the end of the year, I hope to be reading the announcements to you off the teleprompter rather than this braille terminal. Anyway, the point I’m getting at is that my New Year’s resolution is to keep my eyes and mind open. Open to beauty in all its forms. And open to all of you—my friends and classmates. Happy New Year.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This is a story that has been growing in my mind for over a decade. I had originally imagined that Will would, after the operation, immediately be able to see the world with total understanding and comprehension. But as I researched the case histories of patients who had undergone similar procedures, I found a quite different story: Those born with total blindness have a visual cortex that developed differently from that of a sighted person, and the road to recovery is long and difficult.
The most famous (and insightful) modern case study for me was Sidney Bradford, who gained his sight at age fifty-two. His story was studied and recorded by the famous British neuropsychologist Richard Gregory. Bradford was, among other things, disappointed to discover that both he and his wife were unattractive. In fact, he found the entire world to be a visual disappointment, and as Will’s dad explains in this story, Bradford’s psyche fell apart and he died soon after.
The great neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks compares the Bradford case to one he followed in the 1990s in his book An Anthropologist on Mars. In that situation, too, the patient experienced severe depression. Eventually, his eyesight regressed to preoperative levels. But so confused and frustrated had he been by his new sense of sight that the patient was actually glad to return to blindness.
The third (and the only hopeful) case study I reviewed in depth was the book Crashing Through by Robert Kurson. It chronicles the story of Mike May, who is to my knowledge the only living person who had an operation to gain eyesight after living his life in total blindness and also the only person I learned of who had a successful transition, psychologically speaking, from total blindness to (some) eyesight. This can probably be attributed to his work ethic and attitude, but also, from a neurological perspective, it should be noted that May didn’t lose his eyesight until age three, suggesting the possibility that he experienced some development of the visual cortex that could have aided him in his later adaptation to eyesight.
Will’s procedure is based loosely on the one that May had: a stem cell transplant and then a cornea transplant.
The most extensive collection of case studies on this subject can be found in a book called Sight Restoration After Long-term Blindness: The Problems and Behavior Patterns of Visual Rehabilitation. It was written by an Italian named Alberto Valvo. I’m indebted to my assistant, Lisa, for tracking down a copy of this rare book at a university library.
According to Valvo, there are fewer than twenty documented cases of adults who went from total blindness to sight ever recorded in human history. Valvo says that they universally experienced depression and were often tempted after gaining eyesight to harm their eyes (or themselves).
I’m deeply indebted to all these authors, pioneers, and scientists, therefore, for giving me a framework for what it might be like for Will to gain eyesight as a teenager.
I also learned a great deal about the way the brain develops in a blind person from Blind Vision: The Neuroscience of Visual Impairment by Zaira Cattaneo and Tomaso Vecchi. Both of them were also kind enough to exchange several emails with me as I attempted to develop my understanding of the way Will would process the physical world—three-dimensional space, the imagination of color, etc.—without ever having seen it. They also insightfully pointed out how difficult it would be to find patients like Will to study, because people born with total blindness are exceptionally rare. Most people with visual impairments retain some of their eyesight, such as the ability to perceive light or some color, or they became blind after at least some development of the visual cortex.