Gwenn Hebert, 38, woke one morning and saw nothing.
“It was just a massive grey, creamy colour,” she said.
Her partner was talking to her, telling her it was time to get up and ready for the day, and Hebert had to ask: “Are you in the room?
“There’s no shape. There’s no colour. There’s nothing. That’s it, I’m blind.”
Eight months earlier, the newly-qualified primary school teacher at Te Uru Karaka Newtown Central School had noticed something wrong with her right eye: a greasy film she could never clear, no matter how many drops she used.
Her optometrist diagnosed a cataract, a clouding of the eye’s normally clear lens. It’s a condition usually linked to older age, and Hebert said her doctors were surprised to see it in someone so young.
She believes years of steroid cream for eczema played a part, after small amounts were occasionally applied near her eyes when her skin was at its worst.
By July, she had lost all sight in her right eye. Then the left one started to go.
She was put on the waitlist for surgery but told it could take up to nine months.
Blind Low Vision NZ estimates around 370,000 New Zealanders have some form of the condition, and more than 40,000 cataract operations are carried out here each year.
Hebert adapted the best she could, opting to take the bus since she could no longer drive or bike to school. By August, she couldn’t read the number on the bus when it pulled up.
The hardest part was the classroom.
“When kids would write a story, I could not see what they wrote. They would come and show me, ‘Miss, are you happy? Is that what I was meant to do?’ And I had to be like, ‘It’s wonderful.’ But inside I was dying a little.”
She eventually had to stop teaching while waiting for surgery. Due to the rapid loss of her eyesight, she was moved to the top of the waiting list.
In late September, after three weeks of complete blindness, she went in for surgery.
Normally, surgeons operate on one eye and wait several weeks before doing the second. Hebert, with 26 students waiting for her, asked whether both could be done at once and the surgeon agreed.
When the dressings came off, the world came back “like 4K”.
“The first thing I remember is I could see my partner. I was crying because it had just been months.”
Hebert is now back in her classroom, and she says she couldn’t have got through without the people around her, especially her partner and the staff at her school.
“You need people around you. If you’ve got a strong waka, then you’re going to be sweet.”
Watch Gwenn’s full story, including her first day back with her class, on TVNZ+
SHARE ME