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How Blindness Made Me a Richer Person
As teens my sisters and I were told we’d be blind by 40
“In every way imaginable, my life was enriched as I learned to live with progressive blindness.”
My two sisters and I went for an eye checkup not long after my parents divorced. Mom waited with us for the doctor to come in, tell us everything looked good, and send us on our way. Like most teens, we were ready to get back to our friends. But he was taking longer than normal. When the doctor finally returned to the exam room, he sat on a stool and began using words such as, “genetic eye disease,” and “progressive.” He labeled the disease. “Retinitis Pigmentosa.” Then, without further explanation, he looked at each of us in turn and said,
“You will be blind by forty.”
That was the end of the eye exam. There were tears and silence on the car ride home.
I was sixteen at the time, and my sisters, nineteen and twenty-one, were launching their adult lives. I had just gotten my driver’s license. The doctor’s devastating announcement and quick exit from the room played like a movie scene in my head a thousand times. The news came without any inspiration, without coaching, or encouragement. The delivery came like a death…
