TRANSPLANT TURNED ME INTO PERFECT HOUSEWIFE

TYPICAL man Will Palmer used to think housework was woman’s work – until an eye operation changed his life.

The 46-year-old never gave a second glance to the polishing and cleaning, and was happy to leave it to his long-suffering partner, Sarah Gadsby, 45.

His excuse was better than most. Six years ago he contracted a disease that cost him almost all of his sight, making everything he saw appear cloudy and blurred.

But now a corneal transplant has transformed his vision – and turned him into a housework fanatic. The father of three said: “Since having the transplant I can now notice every speck of dust and dirt and can’t help but have a go at cleaning up as I go along”.

Will has not been told the identity or even the gender of the donor whose cornea he received. But he suspects it was a woman.

“I must admit that at first I started to joke about having been given the cornea of a woman,” he said.
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‘The grime gets right on my nerves and I have to do something'
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“But to be honest I really have started to wonder whether that could be the case. I really do think it could be true.”

He said his children Elizabeth, 14, Charlotte, 12, and Simon, 10, make fun of him by singing Queen’s I Want To Break Free – a hit promoted by a spoof video showing Freddie Mercury doing housework in drag.

Said Will: “I do draw the line at a pinny, and I really hope I don’t start eyeing up pretty dresses”.

Six years ago he contracted an eye disease called Fuchs Dystrophy. The condition damages the inner lining of the cornea, the thin layer of the eye protecting the iris. But in spring the financial advisor underwent a 40-minute transplant which changed his life. Will said: “Since my surgery I feel as though my life is a lot brighter and I can now see the world in full colour.

“It’s amazing. My vision quickly returned and I could suddenly appreciate what I’d been missing. Everything looked like it was in 3D, I could see the textures, depth and colours of everything around me.”

The operation was performed under local anaesthetic at Sheffield’s Royal Hallamshire Hospital.

Will, from Doncaster, added: “My partner had to pester me into doing my bit around the house.

“Sarah always said I never did enough washing up and hoovering. But now I’m always at it.

“For some reason seeing the grime gets right on my nerves and I have to do something about it. There’s a reason why men don’t clean like this and I think it’s because we just don’t see the dirt, but I see it everywhere I go.

He added: “On a serious note, I feel very thankful to my surgeon.

“I’m also extremely grateful to my donor and their family who have made such a difference to my life.”

Consultant ophthalmologist Mathew Raynor, who performed the transplant, said that Will has made excellent progress.

He added: “Organ donation really is the ultimate gift. The death of a loved one is always a deeply sad time but many families gain comfort from knowing their relative’s passing has helped save or improve another’s life.”

Rape victim chases tormentors on road

PATNA: In a shameful reminder to the last month's stripping of a woman on a busy Patna road, a scantily-dressed young girl on Wednesday ran
through the market at Paliganj, some 50 km from Patna, chasing three youths after they gang-raped her.

Hundreds of shoppers and shopkeepers watched the girl hysterically running after her tormentors. None dared nab them. Gasping for breath, the girl gave up, dressed herself and went straight to the nearest police station.

Paliganj DSP Arvind Thakur said 21-year-old Rashmi (name changed) had got down from a bus at Paliganj while on way from Patna to her native village Ramnagar in Arwal district. While waiting for another bus to her destination, she tried to call her family members but her mobile didn't work.

It was around 1.30 pm that the three youths, standing nearby, offered help to get her cellphone repaired. They took her to a deserted building under construction where she was blindfolded and gagged before the youths forced themselves on her, one after another. The ordeal continued for nearly two hours.

Rashmi said in her FIR she was so furious and jittery after the lechers let her off that she ran after them without caring to cover herself. "After the criminals escaped __ after all, I put on my clothes which I was carrying in hand," she said.

While Rashmi is still under the care of cops, one of the accused, identified as Sheo Shambhu of adjoining Dulhinbazar village, was arrested on Wednesday night. "Raids are on to nab the two others," Patna SP (rural) Kshatraneel Singh told TOI on Thursday, adding the victim was being sent for medical examination.

On July 23 evening, a young woman was stripped while being chased by a few youths in full public view on Patna's Exhibition Road. Amid nationwide condemnation of the shocking sight that made its way to a section of the TV and print media the next day, chief minister Nitish Kumar had ordered stern action against the culprits. The five accused were arrested the same day.

Why lost humans walk in circles

IT'S a staple of adventure stories: the hero, lost in the wilderness, painstakingly tries to find his way back to civilisation only to stumble across his own tracks and discover that he has been walking in circles.
Now the popular belief that people in unfamiliar surroundings tend to walk round in circles has been confirmed by scientists.

Experiments in a German forest and the Sahara desert in Tunisia have shown that lost people double back on themselves unless they have a marker, such as the Sun or Moon, to guide their way.

"The stories about people who end up walking in circles when lost are true," said Jan Souman, of the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, in Tubingen, who led the research.

"People cannot walk in a straight line if they do not have absolute references, such as a tower or a mountain in the distance, or the Sun or Moon, and often end up walking in circles."

The scientists, whose work is published in Current Biology, also debunked a popular explanation of walking in circles.

It has been suggested that people might veer in one direction because one leg is slightly longer or stronger than the other. Over time such small differences could cause somebody to walk in a circle.

The new research, however, in which people were blindfolded and asked to walk in a straight line, found that while they ultimately walked in circles, they did not do so reliably in any particular direction. The subjects sometimes veered left and sometimes right, which would not happen were differential stride length or power a factor.

Dr Souman said that it was more likely that circular walking patterns tended to emerge from increasing uncertainty about direction. "Small random errors in the various sensory signals that provide information about walking direction add up over time, making what a person perceives to be straight ahead drift away from the true straight ahead direction," he said.

In the study the research team took six volunteers to the Bienwald forest, in southern Germany, and asked them to walk in as straight a line as they could while their progress was monitored using GPS devices. Four volunteers walked on a cloudy day when the Sun was hidden and two in bright sunshine.

The four who walked under clouds all moved in circles and three of them crossed their own paths repeatedly without noticing. The two volunteers who were able to see the Sun walked in straight lines, except for 15 minutes when it was obscured by cloud.

A similar pattern occurred when three other volunteers were tested in the Sahara, in southern Tunisia. Two volunteers who walked during the day and could see the Sun veered off course but did not walk in circles. The third, who walked at night, kept to a straight line when the Moon was visible but doubled back on himself when it disappeared behind clouds.

Marc Ernst, another member of the study team, said: "The results from these experiments show that even though people may be convinced that they are walking in a straight line, their perception is not always reliable. Additional, more cognitive strategies are necessary to really walk in a straight line."

The team is planning to investigate the phenomenon further in the laboratory by asking volunteers to walk through a virtual reality forest on a specially designed treadmill.