Woman blind for 25 years wakes up after heart attack and can suddenly see again

Some stories are so unbelievable they sound like fiction. But for Joyce Urch, a 74-year-old woman from the UK, the miracle was very real. After living without her vision for more than two decades, she opened her eyes following a heart attack—and found she could see again.

Joyce had been blind since 1979, but when she woke up in a British hospital after a life-threatening cardiac event, her world suddenly looked different. Her doctors were stunned.

"When I first came round I just opened my eyes and shouted 'I can see, I can see,'" she said. "When I looked in the mirror I said 'Oh.' I said to Eric, 'You've got older haven't you?' But I thought I'm old myself, my husband must be too."

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Doctors had spent three days trying to save her after the heart attack. There was no reason to believe she’d wake up with her vision restored. But that’s exactly what happened.

"The first time you look in the mirror you look at yourself and think, 'Is that really me?' But a lot of things have changed."
— Joyce Urch

Joyce described the joy of seeing the world again. She could watch squirrels, trees, and pigeons—little things she had once taken for granted. She saw her children as adults for the first time and met her twelve grandchildren and three great-grandchildren with clear eyes. She and her husband Eric recently celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary, a moment neither of them thought would include such a surprising new chapter.

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Eric was stunned when Joyce first claimed she could see him.

"I didn't believe it when she said she could see me. I asked what color pullover I was wearing. She said gray, and she was right," he said. "When Joyce first went blind it made a huge change to our life. Everything seemed to fall away from us. She couldn't do anything. She does little chores now. We try to do everything between us. This has given us both our lives back."

Doctors had long assumed Joyce’s blindness might be due to glaucoma, a condition that increases pressure inside the eye. But even that didn’t fully explain her vision loss—or its sudden return.

A doctor shows happy patient some good resultsCanva

"I am not able to give a medical explanation," said Martin Breen, a consultant cardiologist at Walgrave Hospital. "When she was admitted to hospital, she had suffered a serious heart attack and our main concern was to save her life. I am delighted that she has fully recovered, and it is an added bonus that she has also recovered her sight."

Her daughter Carol Obeirne added:

"When she first came round we thought, this is not going to last, she is going to die. Then she started shouting, 'I can see.' I was just so excited. My mother has never been given any medical explanation as to why she lost her sight, nor has she ever been offered any medical explanation as to how she recovered it."

No one can say for sure what happened. But for Joyce and her family, the only thing that matters is that she can see again. And she’s not wasting a single moment of it.

This article originally appeared earlier this year.