When an eye condition left me blind at 21, I went from being confident and outgoing to bad-tempered and distrustful. But a joke gave me a new perspective
In 2008, I was going through one of the most difficult periods of my life. I had been working as a waitress in a cocktail bar when I suddenly went blind. One minute I was serving a martini; the next, large black blobs were floating across my peripheral vision. Then, over the next few hours, I was plunged into total darkness.
I have had a chronic eye condition since I was three years old: uveitis, which causes inflammation inside the eye, and secondary glaucoma, which involves damage to the optic nerve. In my mid-teens, I lost sight in my left eye; now, at 21 years old, the right eye had followed suit. To add insult to injury, the recession had kicked in, leaving me skint and unemployed. I was forced to move out of London, the city I adored, and back in with my family in Berkshire. Losing my independence just after I graduated from university hadn’t been part of the plan.
