If you go blind, you don’t have to lose sight of how to live well

Going blind suddenly is not as uncommon as we think. But how do people cope, asks Rita de Brún.

FIVE people go blind every week in Ireland. For some, like Midleton man, John Shanahan, it happens suddenly. Nine years ago, when he was 38 years of age, the former construction worker was driving home from work when his sight disintegrated. “It was like a bad picture on the TV; a foggy haze,” he says.

An examination at Cork University Hospital’s eye clinic revealed that he had Leber’s optic atrophy, a genetic condition that impacts on the optic nerve. He lost 99% of his vision in four months, unable to see anything other than light and shadow.