Voices, lives, inspiring stories

Interview with Yves

Fencing helped me !

Hello, my name is Yves. I live in Grenoble, without an occupation. I do sport, in particular one that I used to practice as a top athlete.

Q : Can you introduce yourself in a few sentences ? Who are you ?

A : Hello, my name is Yves. I live in Grenoble, without an occupation. I do sport, in particular one that I used to practice as a top athlete.

Q : What has your life been like so far ?

A : It has been quite chaotic, punctuated by the question of disability acceptance : being unable to see at night, facing difficulties for some activities, being unable to hang out with friends when I was a teenager… In fact, I distanced myself from the others and that’s how I started doing sport.

Concerning my school career, I decided to orient towards an apprenticeship in plumbing, heating, and bathrooms. I got an occupation until 2009, and then I was in total disablement.

Q : So what’s your disability ? How do you live the transition towards disability ?

A : I’m suffering from retinitis pigmentosa, the first symptoms of which appeared at 10 and expressed itself in the fact of being unable to see at night. Then, when I was 14, I lost some visual field, which became stable until 25. Later, I got a serious visual loss, so that my visual field is now tubular.

Now, a cataract has come on top of that, so I have got a blurred vision. Glasses are just a protection against ultraviolet rays thanks to therapeutic lenses made of three tints : one light, one dark and another even darker.

Regarding the transition from one step to another because of the progressive aspect of my pathology, I experienced it very badly. Each time, you have to relearn everything, and as I’ve never been to a center or school for visually-impaired people, I always readapted my senses to my way of doing. And it has not always been the right way…

I adapted my house and the moments I went out I used the white stick which, put together with the visual field that I still had, made my routes much more pleasant. Near a street or a traffic light, I was still able to distinguish whether it was green or red.

I didn’t contact any associations, but my ophthalmologist told me about the Aramav, a functional rehabilitation center based in Nîmes. There, we learn about mobility, occupational therapy, sense of touch, but also to improve the sense of hearing.

I stayed there for 4 months in 2016, a duration decided according to my visual state at the time, and the organization of my life that I had already developed… I had to learn not to put force on my vision to prevent myself from spoiling the visual field, from using the computer with the white screen, and so on. An adaptation I didn’t know before and that I didn’t accept initially, so my learning was really slow. I refused it and I buried myself into sport, so much that I worked out 3 times as much as I do today. Sport was a real refuge for me. Even today, when I feel bad, I do sports for 2 or 3 hours and I feel better. Particularly these days, since I’m stressed because of a deterioration of my vision on my right eye.

Today, I use the white stick, I don’t read braille but I use speech synthesis while lighting up the text as well to continue stimulating my visual field. I should say that the white stick is more often stuffed in my bag than in my hand.

Q : You were really sporty, what was your relation with sport ?

A : I did weight lifting. I took refuge in it, trying to overcome my limits. I went in for a high level competition and I practiced all 4 days or so, whereas today it can be from Monday to Sunday since I really need to evacuate my stress. I need to feel as if I were out of my body. That’s what we call endorphins. Once I get these endorphins, that’s it, it’s not me anymore.

Back then, I practiced with a coach. But now, I’ll go to the gym in my spare-time with my own knowledge. It’s been around 32 years that I’ve been practicing, so now I know what to do and how to do it. And then I discovered fencing.