I like to think I've accomplished things in my life... met people, visited places, challenged myself. But, I've got nothing on Mike May. He set a world speed record in skiing, climbed a 175-foot tower, worked for the CIA, is a respected and successful entrepreneur... oh yeah, and he's blind. When he was 3-years old, a freak chemical explosion damaged his corneas and he was later told he'd never see again. Forty-three years later, that changed. And the man who seemed to have it all was offered a chance to see again. But, where this is story gets interesting is not his struggle about whether to try an experimental surgery, or his accomplishments before his eyesight returns... it's his reaction, physically and emotionally, to suddenly being able to see again. Robert Kurson tells May's story in Crashing Through: A True Story of Risk, Adventure and the Man Who Dared to See.
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What a great book!!! I read it in less than 24hrs. I was struck by how much work it must be for May to make it look so easy. I also was struck by the prejudice against visually impaired people. I have a friend who is blind and is extremely good at dealing with everyday challenges. So good that I fear I greatly underestimated how difficult it is for him to do things I do without thinking. Was I biased? I recall a story about another type of bias in an earlier time. My mother worked in an almost all male field, journalism, in the 1940s. She said the first thing men would say when she started a new job was you won't last. The next was, hey you write like a man. The last was to expect her to do anything...maybe even walk on water. I think we treat blind as either not able to do anything or able to walk on water.
My daughter has Asperger's Syndrome. She can see very well, but has a hard time recognizing faces. If she doesn't see her grandparents for a year, she will not know who they are when they are reunited. I wonder if there are any connections with the difficulty blind people have in recognizing faces.
I am currently listening about this topic, have been legally blind all my life, want to share that in my early 40's decided to learn a new stringed instrument , classical cello, having not had formal training and am able to learn this instrument.
I felt for Mike not able to put words together after reconizing letters when he began seeing.
I would like to convey some are able to learn new tasks, languages and in my case music. As music is a language. But, you must be creative.
I read the music with low vision aides and memorize the piece.
I hope anyone who is vision impaired, legally blind or fully blind not give up what they desire to try at any age.
Thank you for giving an opportunity to comment.
It is amazing how plastic the mind is! At age 39 I underwent surgery for cateracts that I had had since birth-- my eyesight had been 20/40 but I was easily blinded by the sun and had made accomodations all my life. After surgery, I experienced detail and color in such greater fineness than I had every known-- I could not help but stare at the multi-colored pebbles in the sidewalks or the details in the leaves of the trees. My depth perception also changed, and as my weaker eye was operated on first, it became my dominant eye immediately. My brain often fought to integrate the images from my two eyes during the interim period between the two cateract surgeries. It took a total of about three months to adjust, and now I can see all the detail when I want to, but I am not distracted by it. Mine was a powerful personal experience of how the brain can adjust and the need to learn how to reintegrate sensory information. I hope that Mike May was able to make it-- I am not surprised by how hard the adjustment was for him. But, by the way, my father who also had cateracts from birth, had the surgery at age 70, and has adjusted just fine.
I also have an autistic son, and it makes me appreciate the challenges he endures to understand his world through warped sensory filters.
I was fascinated by Mike May's story. My son is 6 and has autism. He also struggles to navigate with his visual world and has spacial problems and is limited in labeling objects. I wonder if the research that was done on Mike May's brain could be applied to the research that is being done for people with autism.
I'm profoundly myopic, but have never been entirely without vision. It's facinating, therefore, how similar Mike Mayes' experience of sight is to mine- I have very intense color sense, and recognize people by large movement patterns, but when I was little would lose my mom in public because I could not remember her face- one I remembered what color she was wearing I could find her again. My first experience with glasses was wonder at the individual leaves of trees, and I've heard the same from another young woman. Recently, I was given glasses which give me some semblance of depth perception, and I find it exhausting to see through them. Interesting to see which parts of vision are in the eye, and which in the brain. THanks for a great topic.
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