Blinded by a bunny…
Could I bounce back from my freak accident?
As far as I was concerned, my lovely pet rabbits Snowflake, Maybelline and Fluff were my little lucky charms.
‘Since we got them, everything has gone right,’ I said, smiling to my husband Colin, 47. And it was true. I’d won a string of competitions in magazines, and kept finding money in random places.
I found £10 on the pavement once, and even won a number of small cash prizes on the National Lottery.
It was as if I had 12 lucky rabbits’ feet – only all of them very much alive and thumping!
‘You don’t know it’s the rabbits,’ laughed Colin.
But, either way, I loved my long-eared pets.
They’d happily hop about the house, settling in their beds to sleep at night.
We’d even managed to train them to use a litter tray – a big hay box that I cleaned every morning before going to work as a nursery nurse.
One morning in March 2017, I was filling up their box with hay, as usual.
‘Hello, Fluff,’ I grinned, as my youngest rabbit sniffed my feet. Snowflake and Maybelline were hopping around me, too.
But, as I lent forward to tickle Fluff between his ears, my foot got trapped in the lid of the metal hay box. I tumbled forward. The rabbits shot off in all directions as I threw my hands out in a panic, desperate to try to protect my face from the fall. But I couldn’t… ‘Nooo!’ I screamed, landing face-first on the sharp metal of the hay box with a crash.
The rest of me landed in a heap on the floor.
‘Janet?!’ I heard Colin shout from the bedroom. ‘It’s not a spider again, is it?’ ‘Help!’ I groaned. I was in agony, blood pouring from my face.
And that’s when I suddenly realised with horror...
I couldn’t see anything at all out of my left eye. Colin rushed in. ‘I’m blind!’ I sobbed, frightened, holding my face.
‘Don’t move, I’m calling an ambulance!’ Colin cried.
While we waited for them to arrive, Colin put a pillow under my head and covered me with his coat.
By now, my damaged eye had completely closed up.
As soon as we arrived at Frimley Park Hospital in Surrey, the doctor stitched up a large cut underneath my eye line.
It was agony. After a few hours, they let me go home with a huge patch over my eye.
The bunnies looked frightened when I walked in, but I scooped them up and gave them all a big cuddle.
‘It’s not your fault,’ I said, kissing their soft fur.
I took a week off work to recover.
I was in a lot of pain, my face swollen like a balloon.
And, when I tried to go back to work, it was tough.
I couldn’t see to drive.
Worst of all, weeks later, when my eye finally opened, I realised
I tumbled and the rabbits shot off in all directions
that I could still barely see.
My doctor referred me to an eye specialist.
‘It’s just all double vision,’ I sobbed, squinting into the light.
The specialist confirmed that the fall had damaged the muscle in my eye.
‘We can perform an operation, but it’s not always successful,’ he explained.
It involved cutting into the muscle at the back of my eye and tightening it up again. I shuddered. It sounded painful. But the alternative was to have severely impaired vision for the rest of my life.
So I agreed, and I was booked in for the surgery.
Unable to drive, I quit my job of 12 years and found a new one closer to home. But it was a
struggle not being able to see properly out of one eye. I was forever stumbling into doors, scrabbling in my bag trying to find my house keys.
But, in a weird way, it made me see the world from a whole new perspective.
It made me appreciate all the good things I had in life. ‘I’m lucky, really,’ I told Colin. I was so much happier in my new job at a different nursery, and didn’t take anything for granted.
And, of course, I still had my beloved bunnies to dote on.
This January, 10 months after my accident, I went for surgery at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London.
My eye was partially repaired by strengthening the muscle.
I’m due to have a final operation this August, as I still have double vision when I look up or down.
I have a small scar under my eye, but it could have been so much worse.
The doctors say it’s a miracle I didn’t lose my sight completely.
I still think my precious critters are good luck, though, because the freak accident made me change my life for the better.
I’d been stuck in a rut but my bunny blunder helped me see things clearly again!