The Day I Got My Sight Back BBC 1 11.35pm (Scotland) directed by Sally George.

I might as well throw in a couple of quotes to show my classical credential (of which I’ve none) and to show that I wasn’t just gawping at other peoples’ misery. Wordsworth claimed that sight was the most despotic of the senses. We all had these kinds of conversations when we were younger: What would you do if…? You were blind? We were always gagging to kill ourselves for having spots, ginger hair, ears that were too big or a nose that blotted out the sun. It was a no-brainer that if you went blind you’d kill yourself. Later, when I’d grown a bit of sense, but never enough to be sensible, one guy (whose name I’ve forgotten-oh no dementia might trump blindness) said that he’d rather be blind than deaf because he loved music so much. I didn’t pop his eyes out with a spoon to test this hypothesis, because I was kinder then. But I did  nod in sympathy with the woman that had lost her sight for four years and was asked ‘What’s it like to see?’ Her answer that ‘it’s being like lifted from the grave’ has all the hallmarks of truth. Lazarus has nothing on the Sussex Eye Hospital in Brighton where many come, but few are chosen. It’s no accident (continuing with my Jewish theme of late) that of all the things that made Shylock eligible for the school of  humanity the syntax of his speech puts sight first: ‘Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food…’ Being without sight is in a sense inhuman. Another patient interviewed had a successful operation to have his sight restored and the first thing he wanted to see when he opened his eyes was his wife. She was equally anxious that he wouldn’t like what he saw. The growth of, ahem, Viagra cures show that to be cured of one thing is sometimes not to be cured of being a complete bastard and fucking off when things are a bit better. This patient, however, proclaimed his wife to be beautiful. God cursed him, of course, for telling such a lie and the lense, pinholed into a ground down tooth, so the immune system doesn’t reject it as being a foreign object,  which was fitted inside his eye began to deteriorate.  He proclaimed himself happy, having five good years in which he could see. Then again, all fat people are happy. The main narrative, however, focused on Ian Tibbets, a stoic and likeable man with two cute young children, whom he had never seen. He did have some vision in one eye that allowed him to make out the ghost of vague shapes and things that moved. Throw in some equally cute puppies and this is a blockbuster film. Will it have an happy ending though? Ian had his tooth extracted and put in his right eye before being transplanted into his left. This is the this might hurt you, but it hurts me much more school and it only works if it works. And when the bandages were taken off it didn’t. Ian said he couldn’t see anything. He was blind. He could no longer even make out dull shapes or shadows. But the next day and the day after a miracle blossomed. Ian saw his sons. Ian saw his wife-beauty is in the eye of the beholder- and it was sweet. So sweet and good.  

 

Comments

It is good when a doctor can work wonders. Sometimes they try but it does not work. I have an ex who I have remained very good friends with and sadly he lost all his sight in one eye and has only four per cent vision in his  other eye. This is due to an eye infection that blew up out of nowhere 6 years ago when he was 57. Before that his eyesight was fine with the aid of reading glasses on a low prescription. Leeds hospital gave his eyes an op that he was told worked for 40 per of people with his condition. He was in the unlucky majority and he is registered blind.

What Steve has to do all the time is make the most of the small amount of sight he has left and after 6 years of having to do so he does pretty well. He remained in his bedsit in Beeston (inner city Leeds) and continued to lead an independent life although his daughter comes round once a week to do his cleaning. In his younger days he worked full-time for a few years as a self-employed photographer. By carefully using his eyes and remembering how to work his camera he is able to take very good photos and then he uses vast quantities of time and patience to adjust them and perfect them online. Last time he visited we went to a nice bit of coast with an inland path.  I spotted the butterflies and the unusual spider first, he took the pix and then beautified them online. He also got some good ones of birds in flight. Provided a person has the strength  not to give up 'where there's a will there's a way.'     Elsie