(Photo: ABC News)
21 years ago, Mary Ann Franco of Okeechobee, Florida lost her eyesight in a car accident. More recently, she fell and needed spinal surgery. When she woke up, she found that she could see again. The first thing that she noticed was a nurse wearing purple. KMBZ News reports:
“Lady, you with all that purple on you, give me something for pain."
She said her niece asked her, “What did you say, Mary?’”
And that’s when she realized she could see again... in color. Before her car accident, Franco said she was color-blind, but isn't anymore.
“Out the window, I could see the trees,” she told WPBF-TV. “I could see the houses and stuff.”
How did it happen? It's mostly likely that Franco's blindness was caused by a kinked nerve, which the doctor unintentionally unkinked during the spinal surgery:
Her neurosurgeon, Dr. John Afshar, believes the car accident may have kinked an artery in her spine, restricting blood flow to the part of her brain that controls vision. He told WPBF-TV he may have unwittingly unkinked the artery when he performed her spinal surgery.
-via Telegraph
(I think that color-blindness in humans follows a spectrum of function, and so she may have been able to see purple, but not distinguish certain other colors. It's complicated. But still . . .)