Experience: I banged my head and went blind 30 years later

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/mar/27/experience-banged-head-blind

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In 1962, aged nine, I was playing cowboys and Indians with my friends at home in Birr, Ireland. We used to play on the roof even though my parents had forbidden it. My dog, a collie named Shep, was joining in, and up on the roof, too. One of my friends was in a tree, “shooting” out. When Shep spotted him, he suddenly jumped forward, knocking me off the roof.

I fell 20ft into some bushes underneath, banging my head on a tree branch. A twig snapped and went up my nose. As I lay on the ground my friends ran in to get my mum, who cleaned me up. Apart from a bloody nose and a few cuts and scrapes, I felt fine. A number of days later, I went to see a doctor, who removed some bark and moss from my nose and told me that I had blood poisoning. I brushed it off as just another adventure and didn’t think of it for some time.

Thirty years later, I started finding it difficult to read. I was an investment banker working around the world, and I had a family in Dublin. I went to see a friend who was an optician and, in the car on the way home, I knocked a man off his bicycle. I was just driving along, and there was no reason for me not to have seen him. Thankfully, he wasn’t hurt and I replaced his damaged bicycle.

When I was in London for work, I noticed problems with my vision: things were at odd angles, doors looked as if they were hanging off their hinges. I went to a specialist in Leicester, Professor Ralph Rosenthal. He saw that I had a leak in my eye; blood was seeping into my retina. I was scheduled for surgery the next day. Within a week it became clear it hadn’t worked. I was sent to Johns Hopkins hospital in Baltimore and it was there, in the waiting room, that I got the news. They told me I would go blind, though they couldn’t say how badly or how quickly. I was stunned.

It transpired that the moss in my blood from all those years ago had caused an immune reaction that doctors call histoplasmosis. Over the 30 years, the blood vessels that bring oxygen to my retina had become more and more inflamed. Eventually, my retina shattered. It’s a very rare condition, and when I got it there had been only about three cases in the past decade. I’m 61 and I’ve lost 92% of my sight. I can identify shape and some colour definition in my periphery. It’s not proper vision but it’s far better than nothing.

On the plane back from Baltimore I thought about my children – two boys, aged 12 and nine – how I wouldn’t be able to see them, or help them with their homework. How would I be able to travel, and how would I know what I was eating? It was a gripping sense of fear with loathing.

My eyesight deteriorated quickly and within four weeks I was registered blind. I didn’t cope well at all. I argued with my colleagues about details in contracts that I couldn’t read, and I got embarrassed that I couldn’t see menus in restaurants. I resigned and spent the next four years feeling sorry for myself and drinking heavily.

My marriage broke up and I had severe intestinal problems. But I was lucky: Brian Cooney (then head of the Royal London Society for Blind People) took me aside. I’d met him when I was sent to the RLSB by the jobcentre, as they thought I should be able to work there. He said: “Look, you can carry on being a pain in the bum and find a solution to your life at the bottom of a glass, or you can do something for others.” He shocked me into having a cold, hard look at myself. I had a moment of clarity. I could continue to drink and be pretty useless, or I could put all the drive and ambition that had once made me a relative success into helping other people. I knew that was the right thing to do.

Now I am the chief executive of the RLSB and work with young people who lose their sight, helping them to cope with being blind. It has been a tortuous route, but my values and my life have changed dramatically for the better. I couldn’t be more content.

• As told to Alex Flood.

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