The day my wife (nearly) went blind

I know there are many people who scornfully knock the saying “everything happens for a reason”. However, they do miss the profound chink onto appreciating life more: there is a teacher in every event. Whether one acknowledges the teacher in the event is another matter. Once giving consent to that truth, the chink then opens you to a vista, a richer experience of life, giving the words “sacred” and “cherished” their original charge.

The Chook, bless her over-abundant heart (another word that has also lost its savour in our flatland reality), is virtually blind in one eye. She has had to get laser treatment on the other eye, which at long last we got around to doing just the other day. The operation had more than its fair share of complications, including cataracts, extreme myopia and partial retinal detachment. She was terrified of the idea of the operation and had put it off for years. Chookie was really between a rock and a hard place: if the op was not done she was going to go blind sometime anyway. If the op was not a success she was going to be virtually blind. That is to say, she would have only been able to distinguish some light and shade with one eye, and the eye that had received laser treatment would probably see zilch.

It was quite a moment, saying goodbye to her that morning this week. I had gone in with her for some of the extensive battery of tests and the pre-op prep, all of which took place over four different visits to Shanghai Aier Eye Hospital. The Chook did not want me to go in with her; she said she would phone me after the op and the first thing she was instructed to tell me was “Chookie, the operation was a success” and I would come and collect her. Or she would have to say …

Regardless of what happened, I told her many times, I would stand by her. I will never forget saying goodbye to my li’l five-foot Paddington Bear (she has an endless array of nicknames) with the twinkly teddy-bear eyes, trusting this was not the last time I would see that mischievous sparkle, a sparkle at that moment more than a little damp with fright.

It wasn’t.

She told me to come and fetch her and I will never forget sitting in that taxi, watching every Chinese nook and cranny go by through the window. The washing hanging out of windows, or strung between the plane trees furling and unfurling in a shimmer of wind and rain. These two mysterious baubles: they grant us the wonder of sight.

To see the Chook standing quietly in Aier hospital’s reception, a nurse hovering nearby: she was wearing a thick eye patch covered with a plastic, aerated bubble and heaps of cello-tape and her face looked a bit like a cyborg. Maybe something out of a Terminator movie when some of the android’s face has started to peel off.

Before I could talk she took the first step towards me, holding out her hands. Something in me lurched. Temporarily blind, she still knew it was her big, chubby softy. “Hey bunny,” I exclaimed, how did you know it was me?”

“I recognised your shape.” Only able to distinguish light and shade with the bad eye, she can just make out silhouettes.

“Thanks a lot,” I muttered.

It had been an extremely difficult operation with lots of prep. Her surgeon, Dr Li insisted on doing her first thing in the morning. We knew it was a weight on his mind. Marion had had to sign a form which said in bold “high-risk operation which may lead to blindness”. Kind of has a way of echoing through your mind for a while, doesn’t it?

After the lens was inserted Marion said Dr Li burst out laughing with relief and exclaimed: “operation successful!” Just before the cyborg eye patch and plastic bubble was put on her eye Marion said she could see everyone with such pristine clarity.

The rest of the day was tough for her as she could not see at all. “Rod, I really sympathise with blind people now.” We sat in the kitchen and played a favourite game. We have literally thousand of R&B songs from the fifties to the present uploaded on one of our laptops. Some of the tracks are obscure. The Trivial Pursuit game is to guess the group or singer and the track being played.

The next day Marion had the patch removed, and boy, did I have an excited squirrel on my hands. The first thing she could do was choose a pair of sunglasses at the hospital and she chose a pair of real orange retros which Elton John in the seventies could have worn. It was just wonderful to watch her pottering among the vast selection of UV sunglasses available.

I have never seen anyone just looking at everything around her with such curiosity and delight as the taxi drove us to one of our favourite pubs, Oscar’s, on Fuxing road (traditional British Sunday roasts recommended). The image of a squirrel is deliberate. You know, the way they scamper up and down trees and across paths, heads twitching in all directions. This was the Chook on day one of her improved eyesight. She could not stop looking out the large bay windows of the pub and exclaiming, “look at that!” “Look at her outfit!” We played a game of reading car and bus registration numbers. I still won, and sent up yet another silent prayer of appreciation for my fantastic eyesight: age forty six, no glasses.

Among the things Chookie cannot do for the next month is read.

She easily reads a book a day on average, never mind People and Hello magazine and both of Shanghai’s English newspapers. I am always hearing the latest gossip and smut from those magazines and who is shagging who, who wants to shag whoever, who was caught shagging someone they shouldn’t be bonking and who is having whose baby and so forth.

But what Marion can do within reason is watch movies. She drools after Pierce Brosnan and has often said he can happily leave his underwear on her bed. I triumphantly whipped out a little present for her, Pierce Brosnan in Robinson Crusoe, the cover of the DVD promising a wonderful visual feast for her with a picture of Pierce (don’t you just love his deliciously Freudian first name?) stripped to the waist.

Note lecherous grin:

Everything happens for a reason. Life is full of teachers. On that first day as I brought her home and guided her out of the taxi, it started to rain: one of those long, sweet, summer rains Shanghai often has, filled with the promise of fresh beginnings, a keener appreciation of what we have (and we have little materially), instead of focusing on what we don’t have.

And the price for the laser treatment including the best lens on the market and including extensive tests and pre-surgery prep came to about seventeen thousand RMB. It would have cost a lot more overseas; this is why many people come to China for eye surgery. And Shanghai Aier Eye Hospital comes highly recommended.

The entire experience brought to mind a favourite poem, The Guest House by the Sufi mystic Jelaluddin Rumi, and I don’t usually go for homiletic poetry:

This being human is a guest house;
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.