Welcome to the personal page of

Patrick McDonnell

I am going blind / Longing for a prosaic* life

I have often wanted a prosaic life. Instead I seem to lead a life of crazy adventures and unexpected encounters. Serendipity often comes into play or something like it. And then there is fate.

For years I have been waiting for the other shoe to fall (figuratively speaking). With my one good eye I have been an accident waiting to happen. Since I was 6 years old I have lived with a hidden handicap. Not being able to see normally, not having depth perception or binocular vision, instead I have a scotoma in my left eye which renders me legally blind in that eye.

Now the day of day of reckoning has come. I have cataracts that are forming, slowly but surely, in both my eyes. In only a few months, I have had a deterioration in my eye sight. Halos around lights, day and night. A film or gauze veils my vision. Sometimes it lifts, and I see fine, then other times I am in a fog.

As an artist I live by my eyes. I see. But now I am faced with blindness. Maybe an operation can save my vision - a cataract surgery - but at what risk? I have one good eye…

It is a long difficult story, one that I refer you to here.

*DULL, UNIMAGINATIVE or EVERYDAY, ORDINARY