Earth shattering? Nah, not even close to what it felt like to be forced to give up my career singing with the Frankfurt Opera, driver’s license, pet bird Figaro, solo travels around Europe...

Earth shattering? Nah, not even close to what it felt like to be forced to give up my career singing with the Frankfurt Opera, driver’s license, pet bird Figaro, solo travels around Europe, photographic hobby and living alone in my tiny one-room German apartment.

No, returning to live with my parents in Brisbane, relying on them to drive me everywhere, help choose my clothes, read my letters and have ‘experts’ tell me I would never sing with an opera company again was more like I’d smashed naked through a plate-glass window.

I had but a few more rungs to climb to international operatic recognition, I hadn’t yet backpacked Africa, South America, China, Russia, I still desperately needed my independence and I was almost finished silk-painting a beautiful elephant scarf. My plans instead were shoved through a shredder. At twenty-nine my Augenlicht went out—totally, permanently and without even a wisp of light to break up the blackness.

I couldn’t accept being blind; anger and frustration dominated. If the doctors had given up I hadn’t—I drank so much carrot juice people thought I was jaundiced, I meditated, visited faith healers, tried religions, attended spiritual retreats, flew to an ashram in India in the hope of divining my sight back—I apparently wasn’t ready for a miracle.

I was still capable; I had after all a visual database stored in my head. To convince the outside world was the problem; people’s perceptions of me changed.

“Who does your washing and cooking?”

“What do you mean who? I do it!”

Why shouldn’t a blind person cook? Do sightees think we’ll cut off our fingers? Chefs slice potatoes at film speed; they aren’t relying on their sight to make the next cut. My cooking had always been mostly by smell and taste anyway, why should it change just because I couldn’t see the grasshopper on my Thai basil or rubber band on the silverbeet? And what’s so hard about washing? Sure, I was told sometimes my whites were a little pink, but I thought Life Line needed the donation of all my boring pallid clothes anyway—I could never be sure I hadn’t gone out with a splatter of tomato sauce over the front of my blouse.

“You’ll never sing with an opera company again.”

“Why?” My eyesight was gone not my voice! I auditioned and was contracted to sing in Samson and Delilah. The director told me I was the best actor on stage. And why shouldn’t I be? Actors don’t stand in front of a mirror to act.

It seemed along with my eyes, people presumed my brain was damaged. I stepped up to the bank teller, guided by mum’s arm. “I’d like to deposit this $850 plus this cheque into my savings account,” I slid the items across the counter as I spoke, “Then I’d like to transfer all the money from this account into the savings account too. Once all that is done, then I need a bank cheque for the amount and to the name written on this piece of paper.”

The bank teller turned to mum: “Can she sign her name?”

My parents drove me crazy—fancy having to live with your parents’ peculiar habits when you’ve spent years building up a suitcase of your own. I couldn’t stand it for long. My brother and I went house hunting; I had the deposit, he had the job and wage. The banks weren’t going to loan money to a blind person on a pension—they considered me unlikely to earn an income. We bought a house on a large block near the railway station.

I was bored. I’d worked six days a week as a fulltime opera singer, and suddenly I was getting about one day of singing a month. I called festivals and churches; I needed to sing. My international stage career downsized to the shower.

I frenetically cooked—Indian, Italian, Thai, Japanese, vegetarian, cakes, biscuits—my home was open like a dawn ‘til midnight cafe, friends dropped in to chat and eat. Boredom and inactivity were my enemies.

I volunteered to cook at a spiritual retreat in the outback. Six meals a day in a makeshift kitchen for a whole lot of victims—they came to complain and found a blind cook with chronic illness and a malapropos sense of humour. They seemed uncomfortable whinging about their problems around me.

To begin with I had no blind equipment; I had to ask help for everything: “Can you read me that phone number; look up a word in the dictionary; program this stupid coffee machine with its scroll menu digital display?” Later, by emptying my wallet and with advances in technology, I surrounded myself in talking products: JAWS, the computer screen reading program, a talking caller ID, mobile, barcode scanner, diary, book reader, thermometer, clock, calculator, scales.

I’d never seen myself as a leader, but a disability arts organisation Executive Director begged me to join the board.

“I don’t know anything about running an organisation or being on a committee!”

Fourteen years later, with President, Vice-President, Treasurer, four not-for-profit management boards and five government committees and panels on my resume, I guess that Executive Director saw what my stage career centric mentality had made me too blinkered to see.

Men were afraid of my blindness. “No guy wants a girl hanging off his arm all the time,” grumbled the blind date my girlfriend had arranged, “You’ll end up with a SNAG who is butt-ugly.”

A SNAG with a great personality—definitely, but why should being blind rule me out of catching a hunky guy? My future husband bumped into me a few months later—he wasn’t looking where he was going. His physique was like Ben Johnson’s before steroids, and I was told he looked like the actor who played Hamish MacBeth—Ooooh! Cute and gorgeous.

A disability job agency insisted I accept a traineeship with the government, transcribing recordings of police interviews. My husband protested: “She’s a skilled and talented musician with a degree. I won’t let her abilities be wasted!”

He supported me to establish an entertainment and production agency. I specialised in finding work for other professional artists with a disability. Courses, conferences, experimentation and a strong sense of what looked and worked well in performance built my successful business.

I put in a submission to produce concerts for the city council. When I was awarded the contract I freaked—maybe they don’t know I’m blind and will regret their choice.

“We didn’t even take your blindness into consideration. You put in an outstanding submission. You said you could do the job and we trust you.”

My initial council contract to produce twenty shows per year steadily increased to over one hundred. Together with other government, corporate, not-for-profit and private clients, in ten years I produced over one thousand events, including art exhibitions and a film. Clients say they like me because I’m prompt, professional, attentive to detail and maintain high artistic standards.

With the addition of my new business and marketing skills, I began accepting speaking engagements. I was considered a unique guest speaker; blind, able to speak without notes for more than sixty minutes, funny and always finishing with a song or three.

I received speaking and singing engagements in Paris, Bermuda, Seoul, Chicago, Montreal; an advantage of being a unique speaker is travelling the world with the accompaniment of a husband at someone else’s expense.

While perhaps it sounds like I was one of the lucky few; my life sailing on calm water, my health was tempestuous. Stomach cancer and failed kidneys didn’t stop me; they just made me swim in the breakers in heavy winter clothes. I ran my business by remote from a recliner in my home office. I undertook fewer speaking and singing engagements; struggling to stand for longer than a minute without passing out. Nonetheless I accepted interstate gigs during the three years of daily home dialysis; doctors and friends thought me nuts. No travel insurer would cover me when I was guest speaker and singer for a conference in the Ritz Carlton Chicago. How could I resist? They put us up in a suite and while I needed to do dialysis on the flights, my main other modification was sitting on a stool not standing to sing.

My focus was divided. I wanted to indulge my passion to sing and stay in the arts, but I was driven to help prevent and educate others from suffering health issues and disability. A symbiotic relationship developed.

I was asked to give peer support; somehow I was seen as super-human, able to be positive and leap tall buildings without even putting on my tights and cape. It was only my family who experienced the bad days—holding the puke bag and peeling me out of bed for a shower. People kept insisting I was inspirational. Quatsch! I just refused to curl up and die. If I was different to others, it was only because I was more stubborn.

I awoke in the hospital ward; an oxygen mask on my face, tubes sprouting from my nose, machines beeping and humming in different keys and tempi.

“How did it go?” I croaked.

“The eight-and-a-half hour transplant operation was successful. Your new kidney passed urine as soon as it was connected.”

“Phew.” I was now ready to begin doing something with my life.