Thinking Positively – The Way to Start the New Year

I have great admiration for my friend Sue Hadfield, she is a well respected assertiveness trainer. She is also the co-author of How to be Assertive in Any Situation and Bounce: Use the Power of Resilience to Live the Life You Want. Her most recent publication is Brilliant Positive Thinking. If you want to start the New Year with a positive attitude you should read this book.

During the time period in which she wrote her latest book, however, her capacity for positive thinking  was tested to it’s limits. Until she told me her story I used to think of the profound words of wisdom from Big Brothers’ Josie ”Whenever I feel a bit low, I think about that woman who got her face ripped off by a chimpanzee “. Now I just think of Sue! She is brilliant, always smiling, brimming with ideas for her next project, I can’t think of anyone better to write a great positive thinking book.

I asked Sue for a few words about her book, she sent me this, suggesting we cut it by half and edit it to have more emphasis on positive thinking, but I think it’s just perfect as it is.

Thinking Positively

Brilliant Positive Thinking by Sue Hadfield

It takes four and a half hours to fly from Luxor to Gatwick. In April this year I spent the whole of the flight wondering if I would be totally blind by the time I stepped off the plane.

A week previously, with my husband, Greg, we had booked into a luxury resort hotel, on an island in the Nile, near Luxor. Holidaying without our children for the past ten years had meant that we could dispense with package holidays and be more independent: Greek island hopping, driving around Sicily, touring Libya, visiting New Delhi, Eastern Europe and America.

But this holiday was different: I’d just finished writing a book and we had decided on a relaxing holiday for a change.  Earlier in the year we’d been burgled and my laptop was stolen. It contained the first half of the book (and no, it wasn’t backed up). Writing for me means no reading for pleasure and so I intended to lie in the sun, swim in the pool and catch up on my reading.

On the first night (after being delighted by the island, our apartment, the choice of restaurants and infinity pools) I sat in front of the bathroom mirror and started to apply my makeup. I closed my right eye and drew on the eyeliner, then I closed my left eye and my reflection vanished. There was a diagonal line across my vision – the top third of the room I could see – the rest was a wall of grey.

The young hotel doctor was reassuring and gave me eye drops – saying it was probably eye strain but to come back if it didn’t improve. It didn’t. We googled the symptoms and diagnosed a detached retina. He took us to ‘the eye doctor’ in Luxor. We found ourselves in a pot holed, back street, climbing three flights of outside steps to a Spartan room containing a wooden bench, an old Egyptian woman, an eye chart and some basic equipment. The eye doctor took one look at my eye and said that the retina was detached, that we must get to Cairo immediately for an operation but that we mustn’t fly because of the pressure.

Cairo is eight hours by car from Luxor. We enquired about trains but because of the riots no tourists were being allowed on the trains. We went back to our apartment and I began to pack for the journey to Cairo. Meanwhile Greg spent the time trying to ring our insurance company and the eye hospital in Brighton. At 6pm he finally got hold of a doctor at the hospital who asked me to tell him what I could see. I told him that it had got worse and now I could only see a tiny top corner of the room. He said, “It’s bad news I’m afraid. Your eyesight is already damaged. We’ll be able to re-attach the retina and we may be able to save some peripheral vision. I’m very sorry.” He said that we should come back as soon as we could but it was no longer urgent and it was safe to fly as the retina had already detached.

Our travel insurance however said that under no circumstances must we fly home. We told them what the doctor had said but they were insistent and said they would not insure us if we flew. Unfortunately there were no seats on flights out of Luxor until the following Wednesday – exactly one week from when we had first arrived.

Despite being anxious I quickly adjusted to seeing with only one eye. Speaking to the doctor in Brighton had helped me to accept the inevitable. If you close one eye you can still see -lots of people manage perfectly well with one eye – even becoming Prime Minister. We decided that since we had to wait another five days for a flight we might as well enjoy our time in Egypt. We spent the next few days sight seeing but decided to spend our last day relaxing and reading by the pool.

It was beautiful weather and the resort was quiet as many tourists had been put off by the riots earlier in the year. As I lay on my sun lounger I wished that we could have stayed for the fortnight as planned.  I was reading with one eye closed but it slowly dawned on me that the words were becoming blurred and there was now a problem with my left eye. It soon became evident that the same thing was happening again – I could be blind in both eyes.

Now we had to make a decision – whether to fly home as arranged or try to get to Cairo overland. The decision was complicated by the fact that our daughter was due to give birth imminently and we had discovered that it is not possible to fly for at least eight weeks after the operation.

So… we took the plane and I spent the entire flight looking out of the window at what I feared was my last view of the world. We turned up at Brighton eye hospital early on Thursday morning and were treated kindly and sympathetically. The surgeon confirmed that the retina in my right eye was detached and the left one had a tear – which could be repaired with laser treatment. He said, ‘We are based at St Thomas’s and only do these operations on Fridays and Mondays.  Unfortunately tomorrow is the Royal Wedding and next Monday is a Bank Holiday so we’ll have to wait until next Tuesday.”

The operation was performed under local anaesthetic. The vitreous fluid is removed from the eye and gas is injected in its place. The gas presses the retina against the inner surface of the eye and gradually disappears over the next eight weeks. After two hours the surgeon said, “That’s it. I’ve finished.” I breathed a sigh of relief and then he said, “I’ll start on the other eye now.” In fact the laser treatment took only seconds. To help the retina reattach I had to lie on my front face down for the next five days with only one five minute break each hour.

Over the next eight weeks the gas bubble began to lift but I could tell from the outset that I had lost most of the useful sight in my right eye. I found myself stumbling on uneven surfaces and gripping rails when I walked down steps. I was grateful to link arms with friends as we walked and was afraid to drive. I cut myself frequently when chopping vegetables and missed the cup when pouring the tea. I cancelled all my teaching and felt as though my life had changed forever.

However, although the sight in my right eye hasn’t improved, with both eye open I can now see almost as well as before.  The brain readjusts and within weeks I was driving, assisting at the birth of my first grandchild, teaching assertiveness and proof reading the final draft of my book. The doctor reassured me that nothing I had done had caused the detached retina – it happens most often to people who are very short sighted.

I was grateful for the skill of the surgeon; pleased that we had somehow managed to have a good holiday and to see the sights in Egypt; I felt lucky to have made it back to England in time for the birth of our grandson. I also appreciate the fact that I have been in no pain and – I know it is vanity – that I don’t look any different. Somehow it was important to me that no one can tell: no one feels sorry for me, no one knows unless I tell them.

The police came round a few weeks ago, with my old lap top (complete with the first five original chapters of the book). They’d discovered it while raiding a ‘drugs den’. By then my book was published and in the bookshops. Its title? Brilliant Positive Thinking.

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Assertiveness Training, How to be Assertive, positive thinking, positivity, sue hadfield, thinking positively

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