2017-09-25
56 分钟I'd started off in the morning with a little bit of numbness, like my fingertips were just really cold.
And suddenly I moved and I suddenly realised my whole hand, all my fingers had gone numb.
And things progressed pretty quickly from them.
It's just a big blur that actually just got darker and darker from the very first day I went to hospital.
It was 72 hours before I was completely and utterly blind.
And that paralysis kept on going.
It went all the way up my fingers, up my arms and all the way up my legs and it left me paralyzed and unable to feel or use my hands.
So I was helpless like a baby.
I was.
I couldn't see and I couldn't feel the world.
Imagine waking up one day and feeling like you were wearing sunglasses, but you weren't wearing sunglasses, and then within 72 hours, your vision being gone.
That is what happened to today's guest, Vanessa Potter.
It's a bit of a horrifying, scary story that's been documented in her book, patient age 69.
And it's a story that is powerful, gets us in touch with the uncertainty in our lives, and also really visits how we respond to big, challenging, traumatic things that we don't and can't see coming in our lives and the difference between circumstance, choice and what we do with what happens to us.
I'm Jonathan Fields.
This is good life project.
It's good to be hanging out with you today, actually.
First heard about your story, I was floored, as I'm sure you hear many times.
So I kind of want to just dive right in with you.
While we're sitting here today, you're looking at me and we'll go into why that's interesting through the conversation, but you've been through this incredible journey, it sounds like over the last five years or so.