Why this book exists
A focused place to understand what is happening
There is a woman, somewhere near you, who is going blind, and who has begun to see things that are not there, and who has told nobody, and who lies awake believing she is losing her mind. She is not losing her mind. That is the whole of this book and I want to say it before anything else. What she has is a recognised, common, entirely benign consequence of sight loss. It has a name. It has had a name for two hundred and fifty years. Somewhere between one in ten and one in three people losing their sight get it, and by some counts as many as half of those with macular degeneration. And almost none of them ever say a word about it, because they have worked out what happens when an old person reports seeing things, and they would rather suffer in.
The writing is designed to reduce shame, bring the underlying pattern into view and give you practical ways to respond without pretending that every life follows the same formula.
