Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
Writing blind
Sisters Katie Smith and Kara Bates, left to right, with a picture Smith made for Bates’ book which she wrote while blind.
When complications from eye surgery plunged Kara Bates into blind darkness, pain and depression, she found relief and hope in writing the stories of a family pet cat.
“It kind of gave me purpose, something to focus on instead of the searing pain in my eyes,” she said.
Bates’ blind writings have turned into a book, Gordon Pumpkin Smith the Second, which she is already in the process of publishing.
Bates went in for a photorefractive keratectomy (PRK, similar to Lasik) procedure in March. While a PRK usually has fewer complications than Lasik, Bates ended up with an autoimmune reaction to the new cornea growing after the procedure.
“I was one of those really unfortunate people who had a reaction to the surgery,” she said. Her eyes became inflamed from her body attacking the “enemy” tissue―which in this case was her eyes.
Everything was good at first, but after a month the complications became apparent. Her sight became progressively worse, things getting so blurry she couldn’t figure out what they were, and an increasing sensitivity to light.
“I don’t think I’ve ever experienced that level of pain before,” Bates said. Few medications will touch eye pain, so her go-to treatment was ibuprofen. Over a six month span, she suffered varying degrees of blindness, the worst lasting about two to three months.
“When I hit that rock bottom point, I was just blind, blind,” she recalled. At that point she would sit in a closet with the door shut, a blanket over her head, wanting all the light in the world to go away. Blankets were hung over the windows of their Colfax home to keep things as dark as possible At that point it was not known if her eyesight would even return.
About a month into her wallowing, while sitting in the closet enshrouded by blankets, her cat was sitting next to her.
“I knew what I was doing looked weird to the cat,” she said. That got her thinking about seeing through the eyes of a cat and brought to mind thoughts of the family cat while she was growing up. She started thinking of his stories and the family stories with him there and it spurred her to start writing it down.
“Man alive, he was one of the best animals out there,” she recalled.
Initially, she tried writing by hand, using a ruler on the paper to mark her place, scooting it down with every line.
“That was just ridiculous,” she said.
So she asked her husband Travis to leave her laptop open with a word program on the screen. Bates dawned her darkest sunglasses and, with the screen light turned to its lowest setting, started typing.
“I’ve always been good at typing good and accurately.”
There were a lot of false starts at the beginning. On the second day she clicked on the header-footer section before typing. By the time her husband returned home, she had 87 copies of the same paragraph in the header.
“That was really strange,” she said. Travis was able to retrieve her work from the day so she didn’t have to re-write it.
Meanwhile, Bates’ sister Katie was coming home early from a mission for her own surgery. Bates wanted to involve her, so she asked Katie to read what had been written and do the artwork for it. Katie had a personal connection because the featured cat in all the stories had been hers, a birthday gift from a friend that she would tote to bed with her every night. Once there, the cat never jumped off her bed, staying with his person all night.
Bates and Katie went through the first five chapters of the book together.
“We just giggled our butts off the first day,” Bates said. A lot of the humor was from her attempts to type blind; she often hit the backslash key instead of the backspace.
The book is comprised of different stories about Gordon Pumpkin Smith the Second, each chapter being a new event in the life of the cat and the family. Bates said the stories are things that made her smile, including experiences that were difficult at the time, but turned out for the better. Recalling these past events made Bates able to shift her focus from the tribulation she was having at that time.
“I’d forgot that I love writing,” she said. It was something she had always done growing up, but had faded from her life while in college. “I’m really glad I found that again.”
She was also able to evaluate her life and what she had done with it.
“When you go blind, you have a lot of time on your hands” she said. She realized she was missing out on certain things because of other things that always seemed to get in the way. Trips she had always wanted to take had kept being put off. Now she is making those things more of a priority.
Bates’ vision did return, but not until after she had written the first draft of Gordon Pumpkin Smith the Second. Three weeks after she finished writing it she was finally able to see well enough to make big edits. Another three weeks later she was able to see even better and make the rest of the edits. She now has it submitted for professional editing while Katie works on the artwork. She hopes to have the book completed before the first cut-off for the Moonbeam awards.
Gordon Pumpkin Smith the Second is a chapter book with illustrations scattered throughout written for elementary/middle school reading level. The orange and white cat was with the family for about 12 years. Bates said he was a sweet cat who was very tolerant with a lot of personality, knew how to open the latch handle of the front door to let himself out and had a few close calls with death. While the family was preparing for a move, he was shut in a second-floor room with the window open. At one point the cat came flying out of the room with the window screen. The cat survived the fall and took off running, not coming home until later that night.
“I’ve always kind of wondered what was going through his mind at the moment,” Bates said.
Katie’s illustrations are compiled from memories, old family pictures and some modeling of their parents’ current orange tabby.
“We have some pictures, but you can only get certain angles from those,” Bates noted.
Bates is already working on a second unrelated book and a website with reviews of other youth books. She writes under the pen name Kay M. Bates and has a Facebook page with that name.
Her left eye is back to 100 percent while the right is about 85 percent recovered and still improving. She is back to working full-time and only wears glasses when driving or reading music. While it has been a long road to get here, it is the best eyesight she has ever had.
After her experience, she better understands and now amplifies the advice given to her to only do one eye at a time.
“I should have listened,” she said.
Jana Mathia is a reporter at the Whitman County Gazette.
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