the body odor is also important, or more precisely the body heat that one radiates. I also find soft hair on the arms very erotic.”
“Fantastic!” Alina was pleased.
“But you must not forget the disadvantages: I never know how old someone is or what he looks like.”
“Don’t let it bother you. You’ll come to know as time goes by. You only have to ask someone. Me, for example!”
“Thank you. I’ll take you at your word.”
“I’ll be pleased. Maybe I’ll like him too.” She laughed.
3 Blind is the one who refuses to see
Man’s basic vice, the source of all his evils, is the act of unfocusing his mind, the suspension of his consciousness, which is not blindness, but the refusal to see, not ignorance, but the refusal to know.
Ayn Rand
Perhaps only in a world of the blind will things be what they truly are.
José Saramago
After our return from Italy, the next medical consultation was only a matter of time. But: Did I really want to undergo eye surgery? That was what I asked myself again and again. As I said, I had reconciled myself to my severe visual impairment decades ago. But that did not mean that I was not missing some things. In this respect, I was different from Saliya Kahawatte and Isaac Lidsky, who considered their lives fulfilled even without eyesight. The more I thought about it, the more I noticed certain shortcomings.
Two matters in particular kept coming to my mind. On the one hand, I would have liked to be independent of other people. Although those who helped me did not show at all the possible burden, I would have liked to plan my time independently from other people. I often had to orientate myself according to the time possibilities of my helpers. On the other hand, I sometimes felt that communication with friends and acquaintances was insufficient. In one-on-one communication most of them took my possibilities into account; they tried to formulate their thoughts clearly and unambiguously. In conversations with friends or acquaintances, however, I often had difficulty following the conversation: I had to assign voices, make sense of pauses in speech and, above all, interpret the individual statements without being able to orient myself by facial expressions and gestures. I was convinced that I would be able to follow the conversations better if I saw the individual speakers.
Of course, I also thought about the failure of the intervention, but I did not really fear it. The prudent behavior of the Russian surgeon had shown me that the ophthalmologists who wanted to test the new procedure did not do so without consideration, if only to avoid setting negative precedents right at the beginning. Whether or not I would have thought of a corresponding operation without the intervention of my husband, I do not know. Probably I would not have found out about the new procedures so early. But my husband was certainly right: Why shouldn’t I expand my four senses to include the visual sense? Thus, I decided to try vision if there was a promising possibility.
The most urgent question I had to ask myself in this context was rather: What would it be like if I suddenly saw? I could not get an idea of it. I would have liked to exchange views with other people concerned, but there was nobody in my environment who could have told me anything about it. Even my eye doctor, whom I visited now and then, remained silent. Although he welcomed my intention to undergo surgery, he had no first-hand experience. In his practice there was no case comparable to mine. Therefore, I questioned my husband, who had informed himself in detail.
“I find it rather difficult to suddenly be able to see when you don’t know what seeing is.”
My husband did not play down the difficulties, but said:
“Yes, it’s certainly one of the greater challenges. I have read a lot about it. You need a strong will and quite a lot of perseverance, especially in the beginning. You really have to learn how to see.”
Not satisfied I dug deeper:
“And what if it doesn’t work? Are there any patients for whom seeing was not an enrichment, who failed to learn to see?”
“Yes, but unfortunately, there is a lack of solid, recent evidence. It is reported that many people who underwent cataract therapy have not been able to cope with seeing. This may have been partly due to outdated surgical procedures.”
“And what happened to them? Have they gone blind again?”
“No, not that, at least as far as I know. But a relatively large number committed suicide.”
“Oh dear,” I exclaimed in dismay.
But my husband knew how to calm me down.
“With all of this, you must remember that they were often reluctant for, or at least indifferent to, the operation. And they were not aware that one must learn to see. They made no effort whatsoever. Moreover, some of them suffered from serious illnesses even before the operation. I am convinced that if you don’t give in to the illusion from the beginning that seeing comes naturally, you will succeed. You have to do something about it.”
“If I understood you correctly, it’s definitely very hard to conquer the visual world.”
“Aptly put! But I will assist you in conquest when the time comes.”
You might ask now: Don’t you just have to open your eyes and see? Or is it a kind of Sleeping Beauty who is kissed awake by a prince? Since Sleeping Beauty is known to have seen the world until she was 15, it was only a kind of time travel after that the well-known fairytale figure had to find the connection to the here and now. This is not an easy task either, but not to be compared with the effort one has to make when, blind from birth, starts seeing in adulthood.
My husband had further explanations at the ready:
“There is a big difference between congenital and acquired visual impairment. It is quite different if you have seen more or less well all your life and then gradually lose your sight as you get older, due to cataracts or other age-related eye diseases.”
“Does this mean that after cataract surgery, such patients do not need to learn to see because they return to a previous positive state?”
“Exactly that.”
After a few years, doctors in Germany also performed comparable operations, usually with good to very good success. A colleague had heard about a clinic in the Rhineland through his daughter—she studied eye medicine—whose chief physician had already successfully operated on several severely visually impaired and even blind patients. In the meantime, he was known far beyond the German-speaking countries. We went to see him and he approved the intervention. Although I was already in my late forties, the operation, which I will describe in more detail later, brought the desired success, also because the retina of both eyes was largely intact.
After the successful surgery, friends and acquaintances congratulated me without exception. “This must be like winning the lottery for you” or: “Now your life really begins.” They simply could not imagine how difficult it is, to learn how to see if one has been blind or at least severely visually impaired since birth or early childhood. They had no idea of the effort required to process optical impressions in a reasonable and meaningful way. The main reason for the difficulties is that people who were born blind or severely visually impaired cannot rely on experiences
