The young man who went blind at 20 and how he overcame all the obstacles to become a journalist

It was overnight, immediate, without leaving time for anything, despite the fact that since she was born with barely six months of gestation, Nicolas Godoy I knew that at any moment I could lose my sight and it happened when I was 20 years old. The last thing he saw clearly was the corner of Juncal and Montevideo, and the trees of Vicente López y Planes square, as he was coming out of a consultation with the ophthalmologist treating him in the city from Buenos Aires.

Despite the difficulties that life has imposed on him since everything went dark, the young man from Corrientes has just passed the last subject which gave him an intermediate degree in social communication and became the first blind journalist received at the National University of North East (UNNE) . Still enthusiastic about the feat, he admits that he does not lose hope that one day science will be able to develop retinal surgery and restore his ability to see.

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That achievement wasn’t the end of anything for the 31-year-old who embraces journalism as “a profession of vocation and the link with society”: he has taken on the responsibility of looking out for the interests of other visually impaired students and leads a project that aims to convert PDF files into audiobooks “to help other blind students”, he says.

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darkness

When Nicolás went to consult his ophthalmologist in Barrio Norte, he became worried because he noticed that his vision was starting to blur. For this reason, although without thinking of anything that had happened, he stopped to contemplate the buildings of the pretty corner of Buenos Aires, he looked at the birds that perched on the tops of the trees in the square, he looked people, he saw his hands…

He returned to Corrientes and the anxiety increased because he woke up as if he had a veil over his eyes and a few days later he had to undergo surgery to prevent the retina from detaching, which would be irreversible. “I had surgery to change the silicone fluid I had, this is done every five years to prevent the retina from detaching if there was an increase in eye pressure, but I had the bad luck that there were too many scars, and the fluid got under the retina and blew it out.” In 2011, it happened that he never wanted any. He did not see again.

What happened to him was the consequence of being born at six months, weighing 900 grams, which left him with visual scars. “I’ve never seen right and left I’ve always had problems. Until I was 20, I had 40% vision, but I had a normal lifehe says and admits that because of his age, although he knew the possibility existed, he thought that “he would grow old, with the advance of the years and not so soon”.

“I didn’t have that in mind, really. I was thinking of something else, I don’t know, but not stopping to see. And when the operation was done, everything happened suddenly and I did not know what was going to happen, I had to wait a few months to find out if I could see again, even if it was little, or not”, she adds. , specifying that her father and her sister, with whom she lives, have also had to adapt to this new life.

What started was all new and different at the same time. Despite the possibilities the doctors always told him about, he was not ready for what was to come. “It was all a big change because it was about doing things like anyone else to adapt a lot of things to the new reality. I had to go to an institute to practice using the cane, learn to use things differently, manage myself differently, try to learn braille, which I couldn’t do because it’s like learning to write and reread when I grow up… The truth is that he can’t stand it, I didn’t adapt to the system and everything that followed was a big change”.

His way of reading is through computers. “I’m tech-dependent and very good at it, so I use a screen reader to help me read, for example”Explain.

overcome every day

Since adolescence, he knew what he wanted to study and what to do. “I have this romantic idea of ​​journalism as being a link with society, but also as a tool to show different realities and to be able to be day to day, to be able to show stories that may not be. to be so visible”, he defines.

With fear, doubts and without knowing what it would be or if he would achieve the goal, but he enrolled to study social communication and unknowingly he began to pave the way for other students disabilities, especially vision. “Study materials are paper notes, photocopies or scans,” he adds.

The beginnings were difficult “because of the setbacks that this handicap entails and the difficulties of education to study, but thanks to the support of teachers and classmates I was able to finish”, he underlines and tells that one of teachers encouraged him and that with her and the support of the university began to realize the changes he requested to study more comfortably.

“It was with the Computer Science II teacher that we started creating PDF files that could be converted into audio books, although an adaptation was always made for me, it makes things easier,” he says. he, specifying that he took most of the subjects orally.

The project of the audio library it excites you to think about the years to come and the days to come. “I want to continue with the degree, move forward with the audiobooks and be able to start working on that. I like TV and radio, and I would like to specialize in crime or technology journalism, I can’t wait to start working,” he concludes.

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