I recently found an animated world in my hometown of Gent, Belgium in a most unexpected place: the Campus Volkskliniek Hospital operating room where I had eye surgery. I can’t say that I felt no anxiety; after all, I was lying on a hospital gurney with an IV in my arm and an oxygen tube up my nose, knowing that an incision was about to be made into my eye and that I wasn’t even going to be given good drugs or knocked out. But with impending blindness as the alternative, I chose my only option.

About a year ago, I began to think that the projectors at the animation festivals were getting very fuzzy and I kept moving further and further toward the front row to see the screen. It became obvious to me that the problem was not with the projectors, but with my eyes. This was a big problem, since I spend a great deal of my time in screening rooms, and what animation festival would want a blind juror, much less a “visually challenged” journalist.

Over the next 12 months, my eyesight rapidly deteriorated. By the time I took my 7 week “Grand Festival Tour” in November, I knew that I was in real trouble. Traveling alone was quite a challenge. It was very unsettling to stare at the arrival and departure screens in the airport and train stations without being able to read a thing, not to mention managing my arrival at an airport in London and taking the tube across town while pulling a very heavy suitcase. I really related to Blanche DuBoise, as I too relied upon the kindness of strangers.

Once I arrived at the festivals, there was always a friend on hand to help me get down the theatre aisle. This simple walk had become a challenge since my night vision was almost gone, and a dim theatre was like entering the belly of the beast. It’s amazing how conspicuous you feel sitting in the front row of a partially full theatre, but I was lucky to have friends offer to escort me down to the front and sit with me.

Enter into my life Doctor Jan Poelman. When he first diagnosed my vision problem as cataracts and said that there was no way to tell how rapidly they would progress, I was horrified. My next thought was “how long can I put surgery off”. I had a busy festival schedule through February, and no matter how silly it seems, spring sunshine and flowers sounded like a much better time for an operation than during the cold and rainy months.

NANCY WITH DR. JAN POELMAN IN THE OPERATING ROOM

Over my next few visits to Doctor Poelman, I discovered that he had a keen sense of humor, an absolute necessity for any doctor that is going to cut me open anywhere. He was straightforward in explaining what was going to happen to my eyes. He answered all my questions, and most important of all, he laughed, qualities that I usually found lacking in my U.S. surgeons (although Jeri, my GP/Nurse Practitioner in San Francisco also possessed these qualities).

Doctor Poelman made me feel secure enough about the entire process so that when I went to the hospital to have my right eye cut open and fitted with its new plastic lens I felt amazingly calm. I was astonished to find only a ten minute wait at the hospital to check in, and then it was right upstairs, where the nurses checked my blood pressure and dilated my eye. Each eye is operated on a week apart just in case something should go wrong and to give you time to recover and adjust.

After a few minutes, off I went to the pre-op room for my IV, which was a mild relaxant, and a local anesthetic for my eye. The nurses gave me my fashion accessories to go with my hospital gown: a blue plastic hat and blue plastic shoe covers. Yes, I was amazed that I got to wear my shoes into surgery and it was somehow very comforting – the adult version of taking my Teddy Bear to bed with me. My entire face was eventually covered in the operating room, with a cloth leaving just a small space where my right eye was exposed. Throughout this entire process, the nurses and my doctor laughed and joked with me, which really helped me relax. They even got into the spirit of taking the photos for this article. The gurney ride to the operating room was only a few feet away from the pre op room. Although we were joined by my smiling doctor, I was pleased that the minute surgery began, everyone became very serious and professional. As much as I love to laugh, this was my eye, and I didn’t want Dr. Hugo Z. Hackenbush operating on me no matter how much I love Groucho Marx.

NANCY IN PRE OP WITH NURSE NADINE GLORIEUX

No one prepared me for the adventure that awaited me on that operating table. First of all a very bright light was shined in my eye, and then the most fantastic animated light show began. I have never seen such intense, vivid colors, not even at the Fillmore light shows in the ‘60’s. The magenta and aquamarines were intertwined with olive green circles that radiated lustrous gold and orange shooting sparks that felt like they were flying out of my brain. The colors and shapes all moved in rhythmic patterns to the music on the operating room radio and made me feel that I was in the middle of an Otto Fischinger animated short. I can only imagine what I would have seen and heard if I had been given the really good drugs.

DR. POELMAN AND I SHARE A LAUGH AFTER COMPLETION OF A SUCCESSFUL OPERATION

The week between the two surgeries was a bit schizophrenic. One eye had 20/20 vision and the other one had zilch vision, and by the end of the seven days my weaker eye had lost the battle and given in to my stronger eye. I began to have glimpses into the wonderful world of colors and sight that I had lost. Now that round two is over, I can see the world even without my rose colored glasses (although I still need them to read) and it looks like my world is a pretty good place to be right now.

There is no way I can adequately thank my many friends who supported me throughout this entire ordeal. I especially want to acknowledge my numerous friends who helped me look like I knew where I was and what was happening at animation festivals. I never could have done it without you all.

Nik and I leave on 1 May for the Trickfilm Festival in Stuttgart, where we will give a workshop and I will watch and write about films from anywhere in the theatre that I feel like sitting. From there we travel to Lisbon for Monstra where I have the honor to be on the Student Film jury and Nik will perform with the fabulous musician/animator Rasto Ćirić. Nik will also give a three day workshop. I will, of course, send you full reports of these events.