Car Accident Yields Blindness
I have never understood how a car accident of the type shown in the movie could have resulted in blindness.
shareI have never understood how a car accident of the type shown in the movie could have resulted in blindness.
A car accident can cause all kinds of physical damage/disability. In Helen's accident, where she opened the door of the taxi suddenly and started to get out, she was hit from behind by an oncoming car. It seemed the damage was primarily to the back of her head.
In this case, there was no damage to Helen's eyes, but a lesion had formed on her brain, in the area that processes visual information, which was interfering with her sight. This lesion was considered inoperable at the time of the accident and also later during evaluation by the specialists in Switzerland.
Based on what was said between Helen and the european physicians, it seemed that she was able to discern a little light sometimes, and Helen mentioned to Joyce in the hotel that it did get darker for her at night, so Helen may not have been completely sightless. But whatever vestige of vision she may have had was very little and of no real help to her.
Several years later, when the lesion on her brain had become 'organized and fibrotic', and was then life-threatening, surgery had become possible to remove it, thus both preserving Helen's life and restoring her sight.
I don't know how accurate or plausible this is scientifically, but it's what was presented in the film.
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The medical realities are really unimportant. Any kind of accident, any kind of condition, would have sufficed, as long as it was Bob Merrick's fault, so he could finally become a specialized surgeon and the only man in the world capable of heroically repairing the damage he had caused.
This is not a film for anyone for whom realism and plausibility are major concerns.