How I went from having a stroke and turning blind to presenting on This Morning

Claire Sisk, 44, is blind a presenter, content creator and disability advocate who got to where she is today after enduring a stroke at just 29 and gradually losing her sight.

Sisk was eventually registered blind and was faced with having to adapt to the monumental life change, before going on to show that anything is possible and inspiring others across the country.

"It was hard to learn to accept what was happening. But I was a single mum, I was working full time, I had a mortgage and I kept saying to myself, 'If I'm going to be blind, I'm going to be the best bloody blind person there is'," she says.

Here – as Mattel launches its first ever blind Barbie – Sisk shares her story, from her first stroke to becoming a regular face on hit ITV show This Morning.

Having a stroke at 29

Sisk had her first stroke in April 2009 at just 29 before having a second that September. Then around November, she was driving home from work in the dark and couldn't see the road signs properly. She went to the opticians who sent her straight to A&E, where tests revealed her rods (responsible for vision in low light levels) and cones (sensitive to bright light) were affected.

"But NASA had just invented bionic rods and cones, which they offered. Who doesn't want a bit of NASA inside them!?" Sisk recalls of her reaction. But then, upon more thorough tests, they found more defects in her eyes.

"They said it wouldn't be worth me having the rods and cones replaced because I was still going to lose my eyesight, which was just awful," she recalls.

Between 2009 and 2013 Sisk could still drive (though didn't at night) and do just about everything she needed too, but her declining sight was looming over her. In 2013, she was registered as visually impaired and had her license revoked, before committing to adapting to life with her changing vision.

"I started practicing with blindfolds, cleaning, cooking, washing, and doing makeup with my eyes closed. "I just thought, I've got to prepare myself. They said to me by the age of 50 chances are you are going to be blind because they didn't know what all these diseases were in my eyes," she explains.

Waking up blind

On 1 November 2017, Sisk woke up with the majority of her sight gone.

"It was almost like it wasn't real," she recalls, wishing to just go back to sleep and wake up again with better vision, or hope it was just caused by a headache.

Sisk went straight to A&E and they said the core cells were dead and the peripheral had gone.

"I only had this really small pocket in the top left corner of my eye. I asked, 'Is that it, it's not coming back?', and they said no.. I knew it was going to happen, but I also still wasn't expecting it. How can you just wake up and be blind?

"It's really hard to digest. What am I going to do now? What is life without sight? It took me a couple years to build up from that."

While Sisk had already begun using assisted technology to help with daily life, this new situation was far more extreme. But she still didn't start using her cane straight away.

"For the next 15 months I was in the worst place I'd ever been. Then I thought to myself, I've got to do something, I need to start using my cane, because I'm just existing and not living. I named him Rick the stick because it made it easier to use, and the day I accepted that and started using old Ricky boy, my life changed forever."

Becoming a face on This Morning

Sisk first started posting content to help raise awareness and give others support.

"I got accused of faking my blindness because I was using my phone. I thought if some random stranger thinks this what do my friends, family and work colleagues think," she explains.

"Blindness is a spectrum. When you say you're blind, they say 'oh but you're looking at me'. In response to this, I always highlight that I can hear where your voice is coming from and I can also make out outlines. Not many people realise that less than 10% of blind people can see nothing.

"You can get up in the middle of the night and go to the toilet, walk to the bathroom and put the light on without being able to see where you're going. That is my life everyday. I used to be able to see. It's memory muscle, memory maps, there's a bit of flapping around. You learn over time."

Sisk filmed herself crossing the road, uploaded it to Facebook and got a really positive reaction from people she hadn't spoken to in decades, encouraging her to put it on YouTube. "When you go blind, you're not given a handbook that tells you how to deal with it – not that we can read it," she laughs.

"You've got therapists, counsellors, amazing friends and family, rehabilitation officers, but none of them are blind, so they don't know how to help you."

Sisk continued posting tips and tricks, like what you see today, from using a colander to strain inside the boiling pasta to NFC tags to mark different colours in makeup palettes, creating a support network herself.

"With a lot of my videos going viral, a This Morning producer saw me and wanted me on the show. The first time I was on it was when Holly and Phil were presenting."

They first filmed her independently shopping in the supermarket. "It was so exciting to be asked because while social media is wonderful, there's also a huge audience that don't use it and still watch TV. To be a form of representation on TV is something else because we don't have that representation. We have almost every other disability but not a blind person."

Other appearances have included her cooking at home and cooking and makeup tutorials live in the studio. "It's just given people that positive impact. Showing we might be blind but we can still do things."

"Not everyone reads an auto cue, people can ad lib. I am a talker and could probably do a good job of just ad libbing." However, Sisk highlights the importance of making adjustments in the workplace.

"We shouldn't not be considered just because we can't do it the way non-disabled people do," she adds.

"Every day I'm forced to think outside of the box, which is what I used to say in job interviews. We are great people to work with because we're automatically going to think differently to the rest of the room. We bring a different dimension and make people think more about other people's needs more generally."

Adapting to sight loss with family

Outside of work, Sisk had to adapt to a very new way of living at home.

"My daughter was my absolute rock," she says. "If anything I felt like a burden to her, although she has never said that. She just loves hanging out and she still does. We go on girly holidays together. We are more like best friends than mother and daughter."

Sisk then moved in with her partner in 2019, who has two children.

"They hadn't lived with somebody who's blind. We were all on a huge learning curve. I was constantly reminding them 'you can't leave your shoes on the middle of the floor', and one day I did fall and hurt my wrist. They were so devastated and never did it again," she says.

"But it didn't take long. We then went on holiday together and I was walking back to the room with my stepdaughter who was only nine and she grabbed my hand and said 'there's a speed bump coming'. Bless her little heart."

Being a role model

Becoming emotional talking about it, Sisk says she gets hundreds of messages a day, including one recently from a grandmother who said her videos had given her granddaughter the confidence to attend her last A levels exam with her cane.

"I cannot put into words how that makes me feel. The positive impact you can have on one person feels like magic. I so wish someone had that impact on me," says Sisk.

"Being able to empower people to go to the shop on their own, apply their first piece of makeup, or cook a meal for themselves and not rely on a ready meal. I just feel so proud of these people."

The best life lessons

"If I could go back and tell myself anything it would be to accept the help you're given, use your cane," says Sisk.

"My life is different, but it's just as good. I'm having fun, I'm going out again, I'm travelling again. For so long, I didn't do that and I'm so angry at myself for not.

"Accept it, embrace it, be proud of who you are. It's not embarrassing being disabled. It's boring everyone being the same. So be unique.

"I just want to keep giving others hope. I honestly think I might live to see the day the world does become accessible. It's so exciting to know I've been a part of that."

You can follow Sisk at @canseecantsee.

You can call the Royal National Institute of Blind People's helpline on 0303 123 9999.

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