Charles Bonnet Film Transcript

My name is Bee. I'm 82 years old.

I have been I was diagnosed with glaucoma in 2006. My right eye doesn't see at all, and my left eye sees just a small amount.

I first started to experience the Charles Bonnet hallucinations about two years after the diagnosis.

I was shopping with a friend on a Saturday morning and I picked up my trolley and suddenly all the shelves seem to dissolve a bit and instead of a proper shelf holding bottles and packs and things, everything looked as though it was like mud sliding down the shelves, and in the mud were very pretty lights or reflections of windows. And the extraordinary thing was when it came down on the shelves, if I was holding something in my hand, I couldn't put it back through this mud, because it seems so very real but I couldn't that, there was no where I could put it back with the mud there.

So that was the first instance and I just thought I've had too much black coffee, because black coffee had affected me before, I didn't think much about it.

Carried on shopping, it was right. The following week I thought I wont have black coffee, I don't think it probably happened the following week but it happened after that.

So again, when I was shopping out in the bright light of the shop and with the shelves, it happened the same sort of thing.

Sometimes people have said, they thought that it must be imagination this. That it must have vivid imagination. And I just want to say there is no way, I could imagine straightaway elephants, change it to a plate to bananas change it to a child playing in the street. I could see those images straightaway, there is no way you have any control of the imagesthat you experience with Charles Bonnet.

They just come, when they come, they go when they go. As I've got more blind, then these hallucinations have got more elaborate if you like. I suppose it’s because I've lost that much sight, so my mind can't, my brain can't understand what's going on and catch up with itself and identify what it's seeing.

I understand there're people who mistake the symptoms of Charles Bonnet hallucinations with the symptoms of dementia. And if only they could really understand it is an eye condition, and that very knowledge would be wonderful for people to realise.

Voice over

For more information on Charles Bonnet syndrome visit rnib.org.uk/eyehealth or call our Helpline on 0303 123 9999

RNIB.Supporting people with sight loss.