Blind but seeing things. Part II

Albert's chance encounter

Albert was living with advanced macular degeneration. Nowadays he struggled to see anything clearly in everyday life. Yet bizarrely for the past few months, he’d been distinctly seeing this girl with hair ribbons who seemed straight out of the 1930s.

In the last two weeks another strange vision became a regular visitor for Albert. This time it was not a girl or a living thing but what he described as red netting. He noticed that this red netting had a slight shimmer and pulse to it and took up about a third of his visual field. Sometimes it seemed almost projected onto white surfaces like his kitchen bench or the living room ceiling. Disconcertingly, his meal was occasionally covered by criss-crossed lines of red or the netting was draped over household items like furniture.

Like the girl with hair ribbons, he was able to quickly establish that the mesh of red was not real. But unlike the 1930s girl, Albert did not really appreciate this latest addition. It was not interesting in the slightest and simply got in the way of things. Albert found it frustrating because the thick bands of twisted red robbed him of the little vision he still had left.

Yet it did make him wonder if this was the beginning of a descent into visual chaos and uncertainty. Was Albert’s ordinary life about to be overtaken by visual phantoms of all shapes and sizes? Were they going to play havoc with his mind like he was a real life character in Lewis Carrol’s Alice in Wonderland? Was he slowly descending into something horrifying… like insanity?

Albert's daughter had called the other night. At one point she said she worried about the way he had been behaving of late. There was the car incident some time back but also she'd recently noticed Albert swipe mid-air with his right arm and exclaim, "off with you". This occurred twice on separate days. Albert tried to assure his daughter that he was fine. He made up some excuse about reminiscing about his old theatrical past on the stage. He just didn't want her to worry. She had enough problems of her own. This was something that Albert felt he had to manage on his own.

                                                                                                             

One day, Albert headed off to his nearby shopping centre to get some groceries. Scrawled on a large piece of paper in thick black marking pen was his shopping list. He'd awkwardly bring the paper close to the corner of his left eye to view. With the help of sales assistants, all items had been ticked off and his shopping bag was full. He was ready to return home. As he made his way towards the exit, he was suddenly knocked to the ground by another man running past. Some of the oranges were now rolling along the shopping centre floor as Albert gathered himself. An observant and caring boy of about seven was trying to retrieve the oranges for Albert like a ball boy at a tennis grand slam.

The offending man, probably in his forties, knelt down before Albert. "Sorry mate, my fault. Are you all right?" As Albert slowly got to his feet he replied, "Yes... I think so." "Let me help you with your shopping goods," said the man as he gathered strewn items and placed back in Albert's shopping bag. Meanwhile, half a dozen oranges lay insecurely on the approaching boy's chest. The man helped relieve the boy of the fruit, "thanks kiddo... good on you". Upon returning the shopping bag to Albert he added, "I want to shout you a coffee and cake. Just here at the cafe. I'm Ben by the way."

As Albert sipped from his hot cafe latte, Ben was stirring sugar into his cappuccino. The cakes were soon to accompany them.

Ben:     "So what's on for the rest of your day?" 

Albert:  "Not much...I used to love reading but my eyesight is so bad I can't do that these days."

Ben:     "My Mum's got macular problems. It really gets to her." 

Albert:   "Yes, I have macular issues too." 

Ben:     "Last week I took her to a macular group. She got to meet others going through similar things. I think it was helpful for her. They had a guest speaker talk about this strange condition that people with macular can get. It was pretty freaky. All about blind people seeing things that are not there. They say you’re not going nuts…it’s just supposed to be a normal reaction by your brain to vision loss.”

Albert:   "Mmmm...Did they say what sort of things people see with this condition?"

Ben:      "All sorts of things... plants growing out of the TV, faces floating mid-air without bodies, weird squiggly designs that move randomly. And can you believe this... apparently one woman sees the Serengeti. You know, from Africa..." 

Albert:   "Gosh! What's this condition called?"

Ben:      "Good question... ummm... Charles something. Charles something syndrome. Don't quite remember. Luckily my mother doesn't have it but she did meet someone there whose eye doctor had explained it to her." 

Albert:  "My eye specialist never mentioned any of this to me."

Ben:     "Yeah, they reckon they often don't. That's part of the problem." 

Albert:   "Charles syndrome, you said?"

Ben:      "Yeah, something like that. Google it or get someone to do it for you. It'll come up."

As Albert began his solitary walk home, he felt a little tender at his left hip. He'd fallen on it earlier. Yet his mind was elsewhere: "Charles syndrome"... "not going nuts"... these phrases from Ben were turning over in his mind. He just had to learn more. It was now time to open up to his daughter and to get her involved by searching on the net.