Soon after Suzanne O’Sullivan had left medical school in Dublin, she met a patient named Yvonne, whose mysterious illness appeared to bear little relation to any of her previous studies.
Yvonne, she was told, had been stacking the fridges in a supermarket when a colleague had accidentally sprayed a fine mist of window cleaner in her face. She tried to wash her eyes, left work and went to bed early, hoping they would feel less sore the next day. But when she woke up, her vision was worse – everything was so blurry she struggled to read the time on the clock. Twenty-four hours later, she could not tell night from day.
Except after six months of examinations, doctors could find nothing wrong with Yvonne’s eyes. She was eventually admitted to the neurology unit where O’Sullivan was working. During the observations, Yvonne’s eyes would flicker between her husband and the doctors; as the consultant moved an ophthalmoscope close to her eyes, she blinked. It certainly seemed like her eyes were responding to her surroundings, yet she continued to claim that she was enveloped in an impenetrable darkness.
O’Sullivan’s colleagues assumed she was faking it, perhaps for some kind of lawsuit. “There’ll be no Oscar for that performance,” one muttered after they had left the ward. O’Sullivan herself was unconvinced. “I liked Yvonne. I felt sorry for her. But I did not believe she was blind,” she writes in her new book It’s All in Your Head, recently shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize. Full story...
Related posts:
Yvonne, she was told, had been stacking the fridges in a supermarket when a colleague had accidentally sprayed a fine mist of window cleaner in her face. She tried to wash her eyes, left work and went to bed early, hoping they would feel less sore the next day. But when she woke up, her vision was worse – everything was so blurry she struggled to read the time on the clock. Twenty-four hours later, she could not tell night from day.
Except after six months of examinations, doctors could find nothing wrong with Yvonne’s eyes. She was eventually admitted to the neurology unit where O’Sullivan was working. During the observations, Yvonne’s eyes would flicker between her husband and the doctors; as the consultant moved an ophthalmoscope close to her eyes, she blinked. It certainly seemed like her eyes were responding to her surroundings, yet she continued to claim that she was enveloped in an impenetrable darkness.
O’Sullivan’s colleagues assumed she was faking it, perhaps for some kind of lawsuit. “There’ll be no Oscar for that performance,” one muttered after they had left the ward. O’Sullivan herself was unconvinced. “I liked Yvonne. I felt sorry for her. But I did not believe she was blind,” she writes in her new book It’s All in Your Head, recently shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize. Full story...
Related posts:
- 70 percent of Americans are being treated for a depression they DON'T HAVE...
- Meditation, yoga, and prayer, could reduce the need for health care...
- Your emotions could be making you sick...
- Can negative thinking make you sick?
- Is cancer caused by negative emotions?
- First of its kind research reveals powerful social media mood virus...
- Turmeric extract strikes to the root cause of cancer...
- The amazing saga of a teenager who ran away from chemotherapy and beat...
No comments:
Post a Comment