ABSTRACT
The author was born with an inherited progressive eye condition, Stargardt’s disease. He describes his life from being a small boy to being a professor emeritus in an American university. He has lived as a relatively normally sighted individual, as a low vision individual and as a totally blind person as his eyesight grew worse. Thus, his experiences vary widely. He describes those experiences with brutal honesty. They range from erroneous advice from physicians, being victimised by a charlatan, being bullied as a teenager, rising to full acceptance in high school, attending college and meeting his romantic female partner, studying as a graduate student at the University of Heidelberg, Germany, teaching blind youngsters as a math and German teacher, obtaining a doctorate, accepting an appointment as a professor and engendering the animosity of his colleagues because of his success as a blind person. He describes his strategies for overcoming the inevitable obstacles that many blind and severely impaired individuals face throughout their lives.
