Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Patient H69
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://patienth69.com/
CITY: London, England
STATE:
COUNTRY: United Kingdom
NATIONALITY: British
https://www.bloomsbury.com/author/vanessa-potter/ * http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/books/article-4474962/Terror-mother-went-blind-overnight.html
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: no2017093323
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/no2017093323
HEADING: Potter, Vanessa
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370 __ |e London (England) |2 naf
372 __ |a Public speaking |a Motion picture industry |2 lcsh
374 __ |a Author |a Lecturer |a Motion picture producers and directors |2 lcsh
375 __ |a Women
377 __ |a eng
670 __ |a Potter, Vanessa. Patient H69, 2017: |b t.p. (Vanessa Potter) About the author page (Vanessa Potter is a former television producer turned science communicator, has worked on science-art projects with neuroscientists, given a TEDxTalk, and written several articles for The Telegraph and Marie Claire, lives in London with her husband and two chidren)
PERSONAL
Married; children: two.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer. Artist. Speaker, TEDx talk in Ghent, Belgium, 2016. Worked formerly as a television producer.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Vanessa Potter is a writer, artist, and speaker. She worked formerly as a television producer. Potter lives in London with her husband and two children.
Patient H69, Potter’s first book, tells the story of her experience with a rare and debilitating autoimmune disorder. The book documents her discovery of the condition, her decline in health, and her recovery and lengthy rehabilitation. Patricia Smith in Booklist wrote that Potter “expertly conveys her emotions with beautiful prose that ignites empathy but also invigorates readers.”
The book opens with Potter’s discovery that something is wrong with her eyesight. Following a brief bout of the flu, she wakes one morning to find that seventy percent of her vision is gone. Potter initially attempts to ignore the odd symptom and continues with her normal morning routine. As she is pouring milk in her two-year-old’s cereal bowl, she notices that her middle finger has gone numb. Recognizing the seriousness of the situation, Potter and her husband quickly drive to the emergency room.
Within a few hours, Potter’s vision has nearly completely disappeared. While she is at the hospital undergoing tests by baffled doctors, the numbness spreads up her toes and hands. By the evening her legs are shaking violently, and she is unable to move them.
Over the next few days, as Potter is seen by a team of various specialists and undergoes numerous tests, her condition continues to deteriorate, leaving her blind and nearly paralyzed. Finally, after two weeks, she is definitively diagnosed with neuromyelitis optica, or NMO, a rare autoimmune neurological condition. Fortunately she has already hit the lowest point of the episode, and her symptoms are beginning to abate.
Potter then documents her slow and difficult recovery. A contributor to Publishers Weekly wrote that the book “records an indomitable spirit that righted a world that had turned upside down.” For Potter, losing her vision means losing her career. As a television producer, she must use her vision and ability to interact with people daily. Blind and with little mobility, she must come to terms with the fact that her career in television is over.
Unwilling to be broken by this event, Potter dedicates herself to recovering. Her vision comes back slowly and in odd ways. First, she is able to recognize vertical lines and edges in black and white only. Later, color begins to come back, but she initially experiences some colors as physical touch. Though she is released from the hospital after two weeks, it takes a full year for her to recover.
Potter highlights her emotional and social interactions in describing her experience. She does not shy away from discussing moments of rage, frustration, awkwardness, and fear. Porter in Bust wrote that Potter is “unflinching in her emotions and how the whole experience changed her.” She documents her frustration with doctors and nurses that treat her like a mystery patient, and experiences shame and embarrassment about her lack of vision and slow progress.
Potter uses her free time during her lengthy recovery period to reach out to scientists to better understand the way eyesight works. She uses the research that she compiled to develop an interactive art installation that she ultimately presents at a science fair exhibit. The installation invites participants to place wires on their heads to record their brainwaves. The recorded brainwaves are then translated into color patterns and musical sounds, allowing participants to experience a sensory understanding of neural activity.
Halfway through the book, the story shifts from a focus on Potter’s personal experience to an explanation of the scientific information she learned from speaking with scientists and developing the installation. Erynn Porter in Bust wrote, “Potter does a good job breaking down complex ideas about the brain into bite-sized chunks that any reader can understand.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, June, 2017, Patricia Smith, review of Patient H69: The Story of My Second Sight, p. 30.
Kirkus Reviews, May 15, 2017, review of Patient H69.
Publishers Weekly, April 10, 2017, review of Patient H69, p. 61.
ONLINE
Bust Online, https://bust.com/ (January 7, 2017), Erynn Porter, review of Patient H69.
Patient H69, https://patienth69.com/ (January 29, 2018), author website.
Terror of the mother who went blind overnight: Vanessa Potter recalls her horrifying experience in a new book (and says her disease gave her a new 'respect' for her surroundings)
Vanessa Potter awoke one day to find that she had lost 70 per cent of her vision
She had developed an extremely rare neurological condition called NMO
Potter had to relearn how to interpret the senses most of us take for granted
By HELEN BROWN FOR THE DAILY MAIL
PUBLISHED: 17:01 EST, 4 May 2017 | UPDATED: 18:27 EST, 4 May 2017
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PATIENT H69: THE STORY OF MY SECOND SIGHT
by Vanessa Potter (Bloomsbury £16.99)
On the morning of her daughter’s fifth birthday, 40-year-old Vanessa Potter woke with the gut-clenching feeling that something had gone very wrong with her body.
She opened her eyes to a world that appeared 70 per cent darker, as though she were wearing thick sunglasses.
Vanessa Potter (pictured) awoke one day to discover that she had lost 70 per cent of her vision after developing a neurological condition called NMO which meant she had to relearn to use her senses +2
Vanessa Potter (pictured) awoke one day to discover that she had lost 70 per cent of her vision after developing a neurological condition called NMO which meant she had to relearn to use her senses
Battling fear and disorientation, Potter made it downstairs in her South-London home. But as she splashed milk on to her two-year-old son’s cereal, she noticed her left-middle fingertip had gone numb.
‘Please,’ she begged the receptionist when her husband dropped her off at A&E. ‘I’m losing my sight!’
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Over the next few hours all colour drained from Potter’s sight. As a TV producer, she made her living from the visual world. ‘Colour is my job!’ she told baffled medics as they flipped through increasingly murky eye charts.
The numbness crept slyly into all of her fingers. By that night her toes had ‘fused into frozen lumps’ and her legs began shaking violently. She had been fit enough for three Zumba classes the week before, but could barely lift her thighs now.
PATIENT H69: THE STORY OF MY SECOND SIGHT by Vanessa Potter (Bloomsbury £16.99) +2
PATIENT H69: THE STORY OF MY SECOND SIGHT by Vanessa Potter (Bloomsbury £16.99)
By the next morning 90 per cent of her sight had gone. A nurse whose face was now only a grey fog took her hand and said: ‘You must pray. God knows best. What will be will be.’
As Potter’s condition deteriorated, the engines of the NHS sped up. There was a volley of tests and a parade of consultants — the most senior of whom told her that he didn’t ‘think’ her situation was life threatening.
Two weeks later, it was confirmed she had suffered an episode of a very rare autoimmune neurological condition called NMO (neuromyelitis optica), or Devic’s syndrome.
In Europe, there are around one case of NMO for every 100,000 people. It can strike at any age — and is more common in women and people of Asian and African descent. Most will have recurring episodes.
By the time Potter received her diagnosis, her vision was starting to return. In this extraordinary memoir she writes that her doctor had emerged from the gloom to become a silhouette who gave her the wonderful news: ‘You do not have permanent damage, and you have a high chance of a full recovery.’ What he didn’t tell her was how weird and painful the return to ‘normal’ life would be.
Potter had to relearn how to interpret the senses most of us take for granted. It was an exhausting and unpredictable effort.
Her friends and family were incredibly inventive and patient. They rubbed different textures (from cotton wool to kitchen scourers) on to her numbed skin and painted her fingernails a full spectrum of colours in an attempt to brighten her black-and-white world. She could ‘see’ colour when people told her it was there, but not reliably otherwise.
There were unsettling hallucinations. A recycling bin suddenly fizzed like a sparkler, bright light dancing all around
There were unsettling hallucinations. A recycling bin suddenly fizzed like a sparkler, bright light dancing all around. Pictures of the sun appeared to rotate and she had a hideous vision of spiders crawling across her daughter’s skin.
Though her children surprised her with their tenderness, family members irritated her by making light of her trauma, and friends upset her by sharing horror stories about other people with frightening diseases.
As well as learning how to walk and see, Potter had to learn to tell well-meaning visitors when to shut up.
Almost five years after her episode, Potter is doing remarkably well, but although her vision is improved enough for her to paint, she is still looking at the world as though ‘through a dirty windscreen’.
Stairs ‘without obvious edges, textured cobbles in parks and endless grey Tarmac’ can still catch her out.
‘I have a new respect for my environment,’ she concludes, ‘and approach it with caution. You might say I tread carefully.’
Vanessa Potter
Vanessa Potter spent 16 years as an award-winning broadcast producer in London's advertising industry, before one day fate conspired to turn the lights out on her. Suddenly losing then slowly regaining her sight led Vanessa to change direction, turning the camera upon herself to tell her story via immersive art and storytelling.
Vanessa's collaborations have led to some exciting partnerships, and she is currently working on developing an interactive EEG science-art project that allows the public to see and understand the effects of mindfulness on their brains. She is also involved in several other scientific research projects. Her speaking engagements include a June 2016 TEDx talk in Ghent, Belgium.
Vanessa's desire to find answers compelled her to narrate her gripping real-time account of suddenly going blind; her insight and scientific knowledge of neurological and autoimmune diseases is both educational and inspiring.
@PatientH69
Writes: Biography & Memoir, Science & Nature, Popular Science
Author of : Patient H69
About me
Vanessa Potter aka Patient H69 – Writer, Producer and Speaker
_R7A1896-6Until fate conspired to turn the lights out on me, I had spent 16 years as an award winning broadcast producer working within the London advertising industry.
It was the experience of dramatically losing, then regaining my sight in 2012-2013 that led me to adopt the pseudonym of Patient H69 in order to tell my story via immersive art and storytelling.
My experience as a Producer helped me bring ‘The Beach EEG Project’ to life. This was an interactive EEG experience in collaboration with Dr Bekinschtein from Cambridge University, and launched at the Cambridge Science Festival in March 2015.
A truly immersive experience this exhibition allowed the general public to see and hear artistic representations of their own meditative brainwaves by simply donning EEG caps that recorded their live brain frequencies. Based on my real story this sci-art experiment opened the door to the science of mindfulness and offered it as a measurable physiological tool.
I wrote a blog in 2013-14, which has now led to my first book being published by Bloomsbury. My memoir Patient H69: The Story of my Second Sight will be available in May 2017.
My scientific sleuthing and collaborations have opened many doors, and currently I am working on an exciting EEG project with Cambridge that hopes to offer a gateway to meditative practises. I am also available for public speaking and for running workshops within schools.
‘Patient H69: A brave and frightening reminder of human frailty.’ Sunday Times
For inquiries or bookings email patienth69@live.com or click here
Health & Science
She lost her sight to a rare condition — and became a medical detective
By Erin Blakemore July 22
What do you see? That question is so complex it may be impossible to answer. But when Vanessa Potter lost her sight because of a rare condition, she became obsessed with describing the experience of both literal and inner vision.
Patient H69: The Story of My Second Sight Book by Vanessa Potter
Her new book, “Patient H69,” tracks Potter’s progression from advertising producer to patient. But her memoir shows how a medical ordeal also turned her into a scientific detective, advocate and artist.
In 2012, Potter suddenly lost her sight. The first half of her book tracks her terrifying loss of vision and illustrates the psychological toll that accompanies the transition from healthy person to patient.
Potter’s ailment turned out to be neuromyelitis optica, a disorder also known as Devic’s disease. People with the autoimmune disorder experience inflammation of the optic nerve, temporary blindness and spinal cord inflammation that can cause pain and sensory loss.
Determined to regain her sight and understand her illness, Potter collaborated with scientists as her optical nerve healed.Along the way, she documented her experience.
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Her descriptive powers serve her well as she illustrates what it’s like to experience the development of sight in real time — a progression that, for Potter, included synesthesia (a blending of the senses in which a word may be seen as a certain color, for example), self-hypnosis and plenty of emotion.
That emotional journey eventually led Potter to art. Her recovery inspired her to create a series of installations that translate brain waves into images, and Potter casts her slow progression toward sight as an art project of its own.
“What I have uncovered has opened my eyes, in every sense of the word,” she writes. There truly is an art in seeing — and Potter’s evocative chronicle of what it’s like to lose, then find, a sense reveals just how complicated sight can be.
Read more
Telegraph Lifestyle Health and Fitness Body
I lost my sight overnight and it opened my eyes
Vanessa Potter's experience of the world completely transformed CREDIT: RII SCHROER
Vanessa Potter
30 APRIL 2016 • 7:00AM
It was my daughter’s fifth birthday. As happy squeals and the sound of wrapping paper being shredded floated up the stairs, I sat on my bed alone, somewhat bewildered, as I repeatedly switched the bedside light on and off again. We all have unforgettable moments in our lives: the birth of a child, a wedding, the funeral of a loved one. But that day, Tuesday October 2 2012, was one I am physically unable to forget, as I am reminded of the ensuing events every time I open my eyes.
Up until that point, 2012 had been a pretty good year. I had been a freelance television producer working in London, juggling two children, a husband and a home. But one evening, as I found myself yet again carrying my sleeping son out of the car after picking him up from child care, I decided enough was enough. I quit my job the next day. OK, so I probably had unrealistic ideas about what a summer with two spring-loaded children would be like (digging in the garden was one thing, trudging most of the garden back indoors again was another), but I finally relaxed a little.
“Smells of coffee and autumnal wetness wafted around me as I realised I was now completely and utterly blind.”
Vanessa Potter
On the day my illness hit, the first thing I became aware of was waking up to – well, not really waking up at all. That may sound bizarre, but it’s how it felt. I knew I was conscious, but my mind felt slow and fuzzy, and I instantly knew something was wrong. As I peered around my bedroom I realised that even though the lights were on, all I could see was a murky brown gloom. It was like waking up on another planet where everything was somehow familiar, but at the same time ghostly and unreal.
We put on a calm front for the children, but my husband drove me to A&E as soon as possible. By now a huge dirty cloud had enveloped me entirely, and I felt my vision literally melting away like thawing snow. He had to leave me at the hospital so he could drop our children at their child care, and I remember touching the backs of chairs to guide me towards the reception desk. As my fingers brushed the plastic I realised the tips were completely numb. A slow fear started to creep up my back, and I remember blurting to the receptionist, “You have to help me, I’m losing my sight!”
It took a while for the NHS cogs to start turning, but I was deteriorating at such a rate that my husband took to wheeling me from test to test himself, as there was no time to wait for porters now.
Time moved fast, yet also induced that heavy slow-motion horror that an unfolding trauma creates. My unusual symptoms caused much head scratching and I was fast-tracked up the hospital food chain, each department vying to hit the diagnostic jackpot.
The following day, my mother arrived and in her effortlessly efficient way created order. I was now very ill – the numbness had spread, I could no longer feel my hands or feet at all. Finally, after 72 hours of holding my breath, the lights went out completely. It was a moment of utter stillness and absolute blackness. A hospital door hummed open, and a gust of cool air hit my face as I was wheeled outside. Smells of coffee and autumnal wetness wafted around me as I realised I was now completely and utterly blind.
In all, I spent 16 days at St George’s Hospital in Tooting, on a specialist neurological ward. I refused to let my children visit because I knew that my blank staring eyes and my arms, bruised from blood draws, would frighten them. The doctors agreed I had suffered a catastrophic neurological episode, brought on by an autoimmune reaction so rare that none of us had heard of it.
biological algorithms
Vanessa has been working on images that show mindfulness brainwaves collected via EEG CREDIT: GSMD
The total blackout lasted a relatively short time and I awoke one morning to experience an ethereal black-and-white shimmering world. It was no more than that; my brain had rebooted and my visual machinery was recalibrating, but this was not “vision” as I had known it. It would take many weeks for any kind of recognisable, or even three-dimensional, images to appear, and many more for colour to return.
During my recovery I was frustrated by one question I was continually asked: “What can you see?” I couldn’t answer this question objectively, as I now sensed the world differently. It was less about what I saw as opposed to what I felt, and in turn perceived. I now understand that “seeing” is not simple at all.
“Blues jumped and fizzed like lit sparklers, only calming when I touched the object itself.”
Vanessa Potter
I had felt compelled to document my illness from day one. When I came home, I logged all the subtle shifts in my sight, the triumph of walking a few steps unaided, the first piece of toast I made for my kids myself, and all the wonderful friends that visited my house daily to walk with me. Those friends stood watching me, somewhat bemused, in the streets of Crystal Palace as I touched gates, lampposts and trees as colour spluttered and erupted back into my life. I now understand that I experienced a form of acquired synaesthesia as my senses were in overdrive, and messages between my visual cortex and my fingertips got mixed up. Blues jumped and fizzed like lit sparklers, only calming when I touched the object itself.
It was these, and other visual acrobatics, that spurred me to turn “science sleuth”, to investigate what had happened inside my brain. Adapting my NHS hospital number, I reinvented myself as “Patient H69” and started a blog, initially typing laboriously in 36 point so that I could see the giant letters.
I designed a series of immersive science-art installations that I hoped might one day show – rather than tell – people about the amazing visual journey I had just been on, and started knocking on the doors of the science community to try to get some answers.
After some persistence, Dr Tristan Bekinschtein, a neuroscientist at Cambridge University who studies consciousness, agreed to a meeting. That led to one of my art installations (utilising EEG technology to turn my brainwaves into art) coming to life at the Cambridge Science Festival in 2015. The immersive installation allowed the public to experience their own live-recorded brainwaves translated into moving images and music. Following that, I have now been invited to give a TEDx talk about the project in Ghent this June.
Going blind changed my life, particularly as I didn’t get full vision back, and I now live with an invisible disability. The irony, however, is that rather than limit me, my experience has created a new direction, a new career. Nowadays I spend my time writing a book that tells not only my story, but delves into the science of my extraordinary visual experiences. I’m working with Dr Will Harrison, a vision scientist at Cambridge University, to create images using biological algorithms that I hope will illustrate what my visual reawakening looked like. Perhaps this way, I can finally answer the question I was asked so many times in the hours, days and weeks after my second sight was reborn: what can you see?
Patient H69: My Second Sight will be published in May 2017 by Bloomsbury (patienth69.com)
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Print Marked Items
Potter, Vanessa: PATIENT H69
Kirkus Reviews.
(May 15, 2017):
COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Potter, Vanessa PATIENT H69 Bloomsbury Sigma (Adult Nonfiction) $27.00 7, 25 ISBN: 978-1-4729-
3610-3
A stunning account of the onset of a form of neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorder, a rare autoimmune
disorder that can cause sudden blindness and paralysis.Broadcast producer Potter developed her illness after
a bout of flu that left her feeling strange. The weirdness turned terrifying as her visual world shrank to a
brown haze and then total blackness while her extremities developed a spreading numbness and her feet
turned ice-cold. In the span of a couple days, she was hospitalized (H69 is the beginning of her insurance
ID) and subject to multiple tests, but the doctors could find nothing wrong with her eyes. The problem was
damage to the optic nerve and the spinal cord by her immune system. Treatment included injections of
steroids and cleansing her blood of the destructive antibodies. Doctors assured her that she would recover,
albeit slowly. Here, Potter's personality as a go-getter, a fighter, a creative producer, and a meditator comes
into play, as she delivers well-written daily recordings of her fears and frustrations caused by her total
dependence on others. As promised, however, there was progress, and that story is fascinating. First, Potter
began to see vertical lines and edges but only in black and white and in two dimensions; colors were the last
to appear, with, in her case, some odd crossing over with the sense of touch. Though she left the hospital
after two weeks, it was another year before she was back to reasonable mobility--and she still suffered from
somewhat hazy vision. Potter used this time to ask scientists to explain vision but also to develop an idea
for a science fair exhibit in which participants are wired to record their brain waves and have them
translated into color patterns and musical sounds. Patient narratives are a growing genre, and not all end
happily. Potter's has that positive aspect as well as illustrating one woman's way of coping with a disease
that touches on universal fears: blindness and paralysis.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Potter, Vanessa: PATIENT H69." Kirkus Reviews, 15 May 2017. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A491934105/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=686ad90e.
Accessed 21 Dec. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A491934105
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Patient H69: The Story of My Second Sight
Patricia Smith
Booklist.
113.19-20 (June 2017): p30+.
COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
Patient H69: The Story of My Second Sight. By Vanessa Potter. July 2017. 288p. Bloomsbury/Sigma, $27
(97814729361031.617.7.
In 2012, Potter was struck by an incredibly rare neurological illness that numbed her sense of touch and
obliterated her sense of sight. Within 72 hours after her symptoms started, she was completely blind.
Dubbing herself Patient H69, she meticulously tracks her mystery illness. Potter poignantly describes the
gradual dimming of her sight and the loss of feeling in her extremities. She expertly conveys her emotions
with beautiful prose that ignites empathy but also invigorates readers. Potters sheer determination is
contagious. As her sight and mobility begin to return, Potter starts dissecting her illness and learning about
the human brain. With the help of a team of neuroscientists, her incessant research took her on an
unforeseen journey that led to a unique collaboration of science and art. Patient H69 is more than a memoir.
It is a journey toward understanding the brain told through the harrowing story of an intensely curious
woman with the foresight to track her progress, and the compassion to use her experience to help others.--
Patricia Smith
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Smith, Patricia. "Patient H69: The Story of My Second Sight." Booklist, June 2017, p. 30+. General
OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A498582615/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=1b96cb08. Accessed 21 Dec. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A498582615
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Patient H69: The Story of My Second Sight
Publishers Weekly.
264.15 (Apr. 10, 2017): p61+.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Patient H69:
The Story of My Second Sight
Vanessa Potter. Sigma, $27 (288p)
ISBN 978-1-4729-3610-3
Potter, a former U.K. television producer, recounts her frightening and sudden loss of vision in 2012--and
the slow return to sight, albeit altered--after an episode of neuromyelitis optica, or optic neuritis. In
meticulous detail, Potter chronicles the journey from a "black hole" to the point a year later when she
realized "that life [was] just normal again." While keeping track of every slow step to regaining sight--and
the loss of sensation in her hands and feet--she approached her sight loss like she used to do her television
job, "except this time it was to be the biggest production of my life," a replication of "my journey in a far
more immersive and large-scale way. " Potter began writing a blog and created meditation tools that she
used based on "the visualized mental sanctuary that I now call the beach." She also constructed art
installations and explored the science of the "blind sight" she experienced when she first began to "feel"
colors. Potter's work records an indomitable spirit that righted a world that had turned upside down. "How
an illness changes you is actually your choice," Potter writes. "The way I see it is that if those choices are
not obvious, then you just have to carve them out for yourself." (July)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Patient H69: The Story of My Second Sight." Publishers Weekly, 10 Apr. 2017, p. 61+. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A490319289/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=88e5d2c5.
Accessed 21 Dec. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A490319289
"Patient H69" By Vanessa Potter Is A Series Of Tiny Triumphs: BUST Review
BY ERYNN PORTER IN BOOKS
h69coverpic
Patient H69 by Vanessa Potter is a sensory experience, which might surprise some. Losing the our most dominant sense, sight, gave Potter a whole new world to explore. With a form of synesthesia coming into play, readers are granted a whole new way to look at things. Potter noted down all these differences and experiences in her blog called Patient H69, which would eventually become this memoir.
One day in 2012, Potter — a very successful producer — wakes up and suddenly can’t see. Everything is dark. She’s taken to the hospital and, while waiting, she begins to feel her fingertips and toes go numb, and that feeling crawls up her limbs. This is the beginning of Potter’s extended stay at the hospital.
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Potter is the type of patient that doctors hate and readers love to cheer on. Her inner producer demands everything be just so. She’s stubborn, frustrated, and determined to make a full recovery. She takes suggestions and runs with them to a thousand percent. She wears bright nail polish, a different color on each finger to see if she can convince her eyes to see them. She has everyone around her wear vibrant colors and bold patterns that she can see. She asks friends, family, and nurses to describe themselves and the room so she can create a mental picture. Even though she can’t physically see, she refuses to give up the idea of images. After days of not being able to see, she is able to make out shapes — not much, but it proves that she isn’t completely blind. But when she takes too long with a test, a doctor gets snippy and says Potter can’t see anything.
“‘No!’ I growl from the depths of my wheelchair, turning in her direction. ‘I can see something.’ I start point around the room. ‘There is a chair over there by the door, and there is a dark shape there on the wall that I think is a coat hook; and you are wearing a skirt.’ I breath furiously as the silence reverberates around me, but I haven’t finished yet. The fight is me is rearing up. ‘Five days ago I couldn’t see anything; but today there is something there. So don’t tell me I can’t see anything, okay.’” (77)
Potter is unflinching in her emotions and how the whole experience changed her. She cries, she screams, she gets angry. She’s awkward around people who make comments like she’s the mystery patient, one in a million, God has a plan for her. She is embarrassed by her lack of vision, ashamed she can’t get better faster, and self-conscious when she goes outside for the first time — she pictures everyone staring at her dark eyes that see nothing. She is vulnerable, and this is when readers feel closest to her. We can celebrate little joys with her.
“Squeezing my eyes shut I open them in the direction I think my arms must be. Incredibly, two silvery shapes appear. Is that an outline of my fingers? I wiggle them and see movement. There’s nothing else, no wrinkles, lines or anything identify them as even human, but that doesn’t matter. I know they are my arms. I exist and a sense of my own humanity hits me like a gush of fresh air.” (62)
While disjointed, the second half of the memoir is interesting. It goes more into the science of what happened to Potter and the brain itself. It can take a while to reorient yourself to see Potter as she once was: always moving, thinking, and creating impeccable things. After spending so mucht time following her while she’s down and out, it is confusing, yet exciting, to see her as a phoenix rising from the ashes of her illness. This is a totally different Potter, therefore a totally different voice. You can still see glimpse of that same determination, same persistence, but some of the closeness is gone. Instead of being in that hospital bed with her, we are a friend that she’s dragging behind her as she bounces from scientist to scientist. Potter does a good job breaking down complex ideas about the brain into bite-sized chunks that any reader can understand.
The memoir ends with Potter adjusting to her new life; her sight isn’t completely back, nor is it completely gone, either. She has 20/20 vision, but there are some colors missing and some haziness to her sight. She talks about . how she is one of many with an invisible disability, and how it’s hard to navigate this in society. She has to maneuver well-meaning but ignorant comments, deal with a bustling city life that moves too fast for her, and learn to find ways to feel fulfilled in this new life. While recovering, she mentions focusing on the series of tiny triumphs and this carries through all the way to the end. A lot changes for Potter, but her determination and persistence sure don't.
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Erynn Porter has BFA in Creative Writing from the New Hampshire Institute of Art; she is currently Assistant Editor and Staff Writer for Quail Bell Magazine and Ravishly, along with being a book review for Chicago Review of Books and Electric Literature. She has been published or is forthcoming in ROAR, Brooklyn Magazine, Ravishly, Extract(s), The Mighty, and Quail Bell Magazine. She often jumps between her interests of writing fiction and nonfiction, short stories and children's books, and to anything else that grabs her attention. You can often find her eating candy while editing her own work; she claims that candy is the perfect editing food. When Erynn isn't editing, she's reading with a cat curled up beside her. Follow her on Twitter @erynn_porter or on Facebook.
Tags: Patient H69 , Vanessa Potter , memoir , books , book review , disability , invisible disability
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