Bonnie,
First: I'm not totally blind. I've been legally blind, but partially sighted
all of my life. My sight has decreased to very little. But my point was that
Garrison Keillor had surgery on one eye which, I assume, had a patch on it.
His other eye was supposedly OK. So my question was, "Why was he sounding as
if he could barely see anything?". Now, if he had said in the article that
he has one eye which has already lost vision and now with a patch on the eye
which had surgery, he was having a hard time, I would have understood. But
he was sounding as if the temporary loss of use in one eye had severely
disabled him and that made no sense to me because his remaining eye was
supposedly fine.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Bonnie L.
Sherrell
Sent: Wednesday, July 12, 2017 3:05 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Blind Man in a Hotel Room
Blurry vision is awful to live with, Miriam. You may see general shapes,
but you cannot see any real details. And as a totally blind person you know
how it is to have the show you're watching go quiet as everything suddenly
focuses on action rather than dialogue and narration and you have no idea
what is going on.
It's even worse for people who have no real experience with not seeing
fairly clearly to begin with.
Former student Juanita had a lot of corneal damage secondary to childhood
measles she contracted when she was three. She had decent light perception
and could even see some colors, if they were pervasive and bright enough.
But she could not perceive edges or divisions, and she didn't have enough
vision even to help her travel with any independence. In her case it was
like she saw everything through a plastic milk carton, where with the guy
telling his experience after eye surgery was perhaps trying to look through
a waterfall.
They gave her surgery when she was seventeen, removing her lenses, which had
basically crystallized, and giving her a corneal transplant. For the first
time since she was blinded as a child she had usable travel vision, and
could identify where doorways to buildings were and such. Unfortunately her
body rejected the transplant less than two years later, but she was grateful
for the time she could see somewhat clearly in a portion of her visual
field, for she had a far better appreciation for how buildings might be laid
out and how to traverse strip malls and the like. As she'd had excellent
travel training, she said she now did better now that she was functionally
totally blind again.
Bonnie L. Sherrell
Teacher at Large
"Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very
wise cannot see all ends." LOTR
"Don't go where I can't follow."
We gave the Goblin King control of our nation!