Learning to see clearly

“What’s wrong?” asked my customer as I covered one eye, then the other, and stared at her in disbelief.

“Your head is missing,” I said anxiously. I slumped on the stool behind the counter of my fashion boutique and placed my palm over my left eye. Sure enough, there was a large black area at the top of my vision in my right eye.

A phone call to an ophthalmologist’s office started the ball rolling and a dye test to look at the retina was performed that afternoon. That night I couldn’t sleep with worry, petrified that I might go blind. The eye specialist confirmed that there was damage to the retina and he wasn’t sure exactly what the cause was – a virus, perhaps? He stressed that it could happen again and cautioned me to keep my immune system strong. I was given a dose of antibiotics and told to rest.

That was in 1986. I was 36 years old, married with three children and working full time. While it didn’t take long for me to grow accustomed to my vision impairment, the shock of partially losing my sight made me rethink my life, and I left my marriage of 19 years. Moving to northern New South Wales in 1990 gave me the chance to experience living in a small community. Perhaps it was the pressure of a new job, a new relationship, and raising a family that took their toll, but by 1993 the vision in my right eye had become more cloudy and blurry. The specialist asked me if I’d ever been to the Wheat Belt in America, as the scars in my retina were similar to a disease from that area. I hadn’t, and so we remained in the dark about what was causing my loss of vision. But I did notice that I was often tired and found it an effort to keep my head upright. I wanted to sleep all the time.

Time passed. In 1995 my new husband and I bought a small yacht and were preparing it to become our permanent home when I realised the vision in my left eye had changed.

I’d been cat sitting and the owner’s relatives were ophthalmologists who had recently been to a conference on the disease toxoplasmosis. They thought I could have it. A trip to a Brisbane eye specialist revealed that toxoplasmosis was almost a certainty and, moreover, that I had lost half the visual field in my left eye.

What did it all mean? I was asked if I’d had contact with cats, which, of course, I had – I always had a cat draped around my neck as a kid.

Cats, as it turns out, are one of the carriers of the Toxoplasma gondii parasite, which they spread through their faeces. When the parasite becomes active it causes inflammation in muscles or tissue. In my case, the parasite settled in the retina, where it was damaging cells and slowly eroding my vision. I digested this information and discovered there was little I could do while the toxoplasmosis was latent but keep healthy and strong.