The following story is about a blind person who got his vision back, and may be useful to understand how it feels like.
'The trees were a deeper green than I imagined, and so tall' Three years ago, Mike May's sight was partially restored by a pioneering transplant using stem cells. Now, as neuroscientists release their analysis of the effects of the operation on the brain, we publish his remarkable account of seeing for the first time since he was three Tuesday August 26, 2003 The Guardian March 20 2000 I took my first flight since the operation on March 7. It was very bumpy and I was keeping my mind off this by working. After about 30 minutes, I suddenly realised that I could look out of the window, so I did. I could see some white lines in the distance and brown and green patches sliding by on the ground. I was so excited and eager to find out what I was looking at that I asked the person sitting next to me: "Excuse me, I just got my sight back last week after being totally blind for 43 years. Could you help me figure out what I am seeing?" There was a long pause as she decided whether I was a lunatic or a miracle. Article continues I broke the silence by asking if the white lines I could see were mountains. She said: "No, honey, that's haze." From then on, she and her husband gave me a play by play commentary on the central valley, fields, channels, roads, Tehachapi mountains and, finally, the Los Angeles coastline. I could see the water and even the waves. I picked out white dots, which must have been sailboats. March 25 I have just returned from a conference and my first intense business and social interaction with the use of low vision. I found it very distracting to look at people's faces when I was having a conversation. I can see their lips moving, eyelashes flickering, head nodding and hands gesturing. At first, I tried looking down, but if it was a woman in a low-cut top that would be even more distracting. It was easier to close my eyes or tune out the visual input. This was often necessary in order to concentrate on what they were saying. I am sure there will come a time when all this visual communication will mean more to me, but for now it is just distracting. Although I can't yet recognise faces I could remember the colour of someone's hair and clothing. If someone I had spoken to earlier came up to me, I could see who it was and acknowledge him or her before they said anything. March 26 The soccer team I helped coach last autumn got together today for a reunion. There were 14 children and 12 adults. The kids played soccer and asked me to play with them. I am more tentative with sight than I was without. My perception of space is still confusing enough and I don't want to run over one of these little guys. Still, I can see the ball flying through the air, which gives me a thrill. They presented me with a large framed photograph of the team, signed by them all. I could read their signatures and pick out their faces in the picture with some help from the other coach, Charlie. April 3 I played a game today with my six-year-old son, Wyndham, which involved kicking a ball back and forth. It was a very visual game: the object was to catch the ball. As it progressed, I was able to run six to 10ft and catch the ball in the air. At other times, it would slip right through my hands. I am taller and faster than Wyndham and he can see much better than me, so we were quite evenly matched. He was better at kicking the ball straight than I was. We each caught the ball 20 times over the course of an hour. April 30 In the nick of time, I got the OK from Dr Goodman to go skiing. So, armed with glasses and goggles, the May family headed for the Kirkwood resort for a little see and ski. I particularly wanted to ski at Kirkwood because I met my wife, Jennifer, there 16 years ago when she volunteered as a guide for our blind sports programme. As we went down I got goose bumps, despite the warm sunshine, as a flood of beautiful sights came to me. Jennifer was in front of me, guiding as usual, and she looked very good, just as I had always imagined, graceful and attractive. The trees were a deeper green than imagined and so tall. I never thought of them as much more than obstacles to be avoided. The way they stood in stark contrast to the white snow was so incredibly vivid. Above the trees were the distant cliffs and higher still, the blue sky, not a cloud in it. I could see the different colours of the ridges and guess at what those colours represented. Yet, I only knew from logic that those cliffs were a couple of miles away rather than a couple of hundred yards as they appeared. There were so few people on the slopes that I was able to ski, unguided, quite well, though I found that my mind and my body were struggling over which was in charge on the slopes. I had a TV reporter with me on the chairlift and I made the mistake of telling him that this day of skiing was "like having sex with the lights on". Of course, this was the soundbite with which they led their news story. I meant that skiing was a fantastic experience and one did not need sight to fully experience it, but at the same time the visual dimension was not to be ignored. June 15 My ability to figure out what visual things are has definitely improved. Detailed items and pictures are still the most difficult. Colours, shapes and movement are the best indicators for me of what is what. I am gaining a better ability to integrate the vision into my other sensory perceptions so it doesn't dominate so much. Still, I tune out the visual input when it is too distracting, mainly in conversations. Think of how distracting it is when you are speaking and hear an echo of your own voice. It is difficult to ignore that echo. Listening to someone speak and watching him or her at the same time is like that for me. It is hard to do both: look and listen. June 21 Back on March 7, my vision went from light perception to 20/1000 in one eye. Nothing will ever match that incremental increase. None the less, a set of binoculars sure gave me a whole new perspective when I tried them for the first time. I was at the falls above Fallen Leaf Lake near Tahoe. I love the sounds and the power of pounding water, whether it is the waves or a waterfall. There are so many audio nuances. They are intricate and seductive and frightening. Up close to these particular falls, I could not understand what someone was saying more than two feet away. Over 30 feet away, it is not likely that I would hear a person yelling. It frightened me that my kids could get in trouble and I wouldn't even know. This time was different. I put the binoculars to my face and all sorts of things I could barely see came leaping into view. The water, which sounds so intimidating, looked soft and bubbly. Best of all I could see Carson and Wyndham happily climbing on the rocks. Even though Jennifer was nearby, I felt safe knowing where they were myself and it was fun to see them exploring. Being so reliant on audio for so many years, I just can't get over a situation like this where the visual channel is so powerful. It is these "visually virgin" experiences that are so notable. It is difficult in any event not to be overwhelmed by this incredible natural beauty as perceived by all the senses. June 25 After another visual revelation this weekend, I wondered out loud if I should make a list of things I should take a look at. A friend said: "No, Mike, it's the fact that you're going ahead with life as usual that makes your learning experience so interesting." This weekend was the 50th anniversary celebration at Enchanted Hills Camp for the Blind, in the Napa foothills. It really is a gorgeous place, and, for me, it is a second home. On Saturday night, I was walking from the upper camp to the lower camp with my boys. It was very dark and they were scared. I was looking for anything to distract them from thinking about the dense, dark woods around us. When one of them mentioned the stars, I cultivated the conversation. They told me how many stars they could see and, in no time, we reached our cabin. After the boys and Jennifer were asleep, I walked back up the hill, got my binoculars out of the car and headed for the recreation field, the most open place in camp. I had fallen asleep there many times with friends telling me about the stars. I laid down smack in the middle of the field and closed my eyes to reflect on being in this place in years past. When I was ready, I opened my eyes. There were all these white dots, so very many white dots. When I looked through the binoculars, there were so many white dots I couldn't possibly count them. Back and forth I went, glasses on, glasses off, and they were the real thing - not my imagination, not a vision from a good author who made me think I was seeing them. The real thing, seemingly near enough to touch. With my eye, I could count somewhere in the range of 25 to 35 stars. With the binoculars, I couldn't keep count. The stars were too dense and the limited field of vision made it hard to keep track of which ones I had already counted. I lay there for an hour or so, not really aware of time but finally noticing around midnight it was getting chilly. July 25 People ask me: "Mike, are you tired of all the questions?" The answer is, mostly no. I do struggle with the fact that I don't have all the answers. I am still very much a rookie with this visual stuff. I am constantly trying to figure things out. My sister Ann was fun to "see" for the first time while I was attending a conference in Denver last week. While walking along a downtown street, she suddenly dragged me across the sidewalk and stopped a horse-drawn cart so I could check it out. Only Ann would do that. A while later, we were sitting in a cafe and Ann exclaimed that a well-endowed woman with bright pink hair and sequins had just come in. When Ann began to stand up I quickly told her there was no need to bring the woman over to me, I would subtly check her out when we left the cafe. The pink hair was really pink. I might have thought it was a light bulb if Ann hadn't told me what it was. August 6 Returning from a visit to see some friends in Switzerland, I spent a night in London, dropping my cases at a hotel at Heathrow and taking the underground into the city. There are 21 stops from Heathrow Terminal 4 to Covent Garden and, much to my dismay, they don't announce the stops. I got quite annoyed about this and tried to walk from my train car into the next so I could speak to the conductor or engineer. This wasn't possible. I did find an emergency box with a glass tube but I wasn't quite annoyed enough to see what would happen if I broke it. I can't believe the blind people of the UK haven't screamed bloody murder about this most rudimentary access issue. I headed into the city to see the play, Buddy. When I asked a waiter for directions, he said: "Who is going to take you there?" I explained that I had made it this far from California and I reckoned I could make it the last few blocks to the theatre on my own. The theatre was too hot so I adjourned to an Italian sidewalk cafe for a late dinner. It was a fabulous people-watching spot, a streetlight was overhead and the sidewalk was on my good side, my right side. I can see colours, shapes and movement pretty well, but not details. People come in so many shapes and sizes and I think I saw one of each on that bustling London street corner. High heels have a distinct sound and now I see they also cause women to walk differently; it looks painful. I never tired of the variety of people milling around me. I gave up my people-watching to head back to the hotel and an early- morning flight. September 27 Until the Olympics came on TV this past week, I have found little motivation to look at a television screen. I loved seeing videos of my boys when they were babies and I have tried occasionally to see parts of various programmes, but the pictures usually move too fast for me to get a fix on them. I have found myself popping up from my seat to our relatively small TV screen many times over the past evenings. My wife and kids are so interested that they exclaim loudly, drowning out the commentator. So, I have no choice but to try and see what is going on since I can't hear when the competition gets exciting. I have tried watching football and have been unsuccessful but for some reason the Olympic pictures are easier to follow. I think this has to do with the fact that the network is focusing on a specific athlete and so the camera isn't flitting around the field between many people as it might in a big team sport. What have I been able to see? The 10m platform women divers have been fun to watch. My brain struggles to fathom the twists and turns the divers make. They are so talented and so athletic looking. The slow- motion replays are perfect for me to confirm what I think I saw in the dive. I have been on a horse going over a jump before but I have to say that my mental image of showjumping was different from what I saw for the first time on the screen. The way the horses stretched forward and bunched their back feet was interesting and different to what I'd imagined. I have ridden a lot over the years and think of it in terms of smell, feel and emotion. I have seldom thought of it visually. I have been at two Winter Olympics, Sarajevo and Calgary. I have been at several Paralympic competitions and ran a torch mile for the LA Olympics. I hanker to be in Sydney for the full Olympic spectator experience but, short of that, watching it on television with the enthusiasm of my boys drowning out the announcer is a fun runner-up way to participate. It is ironic that the boys make it hard for me to hear and now my big head close to the screen makes it hard for them to see. October 18 When I started this journal in March, I wrote about the first time I looked out the window of an aircraft. I still enjoy looking out the window from time to time but I find myself more often caught up in what happens inside the cabin. On at least half of the flights I catch I find myself in a conversation with the person sitting next to me. On a flight from Washington DC to Denver last week I had a conversation with a young woman from the DC area. We compared notes about our jobs without actually saying anything about what we did, then moved on to discussing what I can see. Inevitably, she asked what I could see of her. Since she was on my left side, I had not had the chance to look at her with my good right eye. I turned to face her and said I could see blonde hair and the colour of her clothing. She asked if I could tell what colour her eyes were and I said only up close. She then leaned up close and asked again. This is where it got interesting. I have to be six inches or closer and I need a couple of seconds to stare to see any detail. I would term my visual range for seeing eyes "kissing distance". It is quite unsettling looking into someone's eyes, especially when you aren't used to it. When Ms DC to Denver casually leaned close enough, I couldn't even stammer out the answer that her eyes were blue. I might have been less shocked if she had taken her shirt off and asked what I could see. I had never seen someone's eyes other than those of my family and it was very disconcerting. Although I was tongue-tied, she was very sweet about it and probably didn't notice I was flustered. This was a very intimate experience and I can't fathom how sighted people go around seeing each other's eyes without being flustered too. November 21 2001 After 19 months of my new vision I have found watching moving pictures to be mainly an audio experience. The family watched Star Wars last night after a huge Thanksgiving meal. I enjoyed slumping into the couch with my boys on either side but I never got a clue what the movie was about other than loud battling. On the other hand, I got a lot out of seeing Warren Miller's ski movie Cold Fusion on Saturday night. This was Warren's 52nd yearly feature movie and our 14th, the first being the one I was in, Beyond the Edge, in 1988. Cold Fusion is the first movie I have literally "seen". We sat front and centre, first row, 15ft from the big screen. I was so close and the contrasts were so good that I could see and understand for the first time how spectacular some of these feats are. We were in Alaska at Mount Aleyeska. My stomach was in my mouth seeing the powder piling down the slope with skiers bouncing through it, dodging avalanches. I could tell the degree of steepness and the speed of the skiers. We were in Kenya, trudging through the forest, past elephants and up to the glaciers. We were helicopter skiing, cliff jumping and skimming over almost frozen ponds. I felt part of it, no more than 15ft away. Somehow my inexperienced visual cortex was making sense of this movie bringing to life my imagination of these experiences that I had heard and felt for over 20 years but never seen. August 21 2002 Our family took a spontaneous vacation around northern Washington State recently and there was lots of "visual candy" on this trip. Here are some of the highlights: On Lopez Island, in the San Juan chain, I saw seals sunning on the rocks. A beach called Baggett Beach was steeped in small rocks instead of sand, making for an interesting variety of colours as well as a different sound as the waves sizzled through the rocks. In the Cascade mountains I was struck by how close cliffs and peaks looked that were in fact miles away. I am not sure if I just wasn't around many before or if I am noticing them better, but I have been enjoying seeing butterflies. A day doesn't go by that I don't appreciate the visual details all around me. There seems to be an infinite number of visuals to absorb, not that I let this dominate my thinking. I can now have the enjoyment of new sights without the distraction of the visual information dominating my perceptions. January 12 2003 Almost three years now with low vision and the mind's eye is playing a major role in my low vision experience. I wonder if a totally blind person has the opportunity to develop a mind's eye more than most sighted folks. Since they can see and process their environment quickly, sighted people wouldn't have as strong a need to picture the environment ahead of time. For example, I can picture several airports I frequent as I have had to compose mental images in order to efficiently get around these airports over the years rather than having to wait for assistance. A sighted person wouldn't need to do this any more than needing to memorise ski runs. I suppose 20 years from now, there will be more data than my anecdotes to explain these things and a whole field of new vision rehabilitation may evolve. © Mike May. Read more at Senderogroup.com To unsubscribe send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the subject unsubscribe. To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please visit the list home page at http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in
