A woman who hasn’t been able to see since she was 11 years old had her sight restored after an accident in which she hit her head on a coffee table.
Lisa Reid, from Auckland in New Zealand, hadn’t been able to see since she was a child because of a tumour pressing down on her optic nerve.
But at 24 years old, Ms Reid knelt down to kiss her guide dog Ami goodnight – and hit her head.
She went to bed as normal, but the next morning woke up and could see again.
“Nobody knows what happened or can explain it,” Ms Reid, who is now 38, told Daily Mail Australia.
“I can’t really find words to describe how it felt – amazing, fantastic. You can imagine not being able to see and then you can, you can’t really describe that. To see the world again visually is a gift.”
She explains one shock she got when she got her sight back was seeing her brother for the first time after 13 years.
“He was a man… with a goatee and everything. My brother’s a man,” Ms Reid said. “When I saw my mum, I was like: ‘You look the same but older.’ I turned into a woman and my brother turned into a man.”
Next month it will be 14 years since Ms Reid had her sight restored. The incident happened in the year 2000, but Ms Reid, who is now a mother, is telling her story now to raise awareness for Blind Week in New Zealand.
She said she would be “lost without” the country’s Blind Foundation charity, which hosts the awareness week.
“I’m grateful for what they’ve given me,” she said.
