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‘What do I do with the rest of my life?’

As Maple Ridge author Ursula Fischer started to go blind she decided to make herself happy again.
Ursula Fischer with her self-published book, The Man Who Loves Tiramisu.
Ursula Fischer of Maple Ridge has just published her first book and is working on a second.

Ursula Fischer was four years old when she fell into a polluted river in Hessen, Germany.

That led to the onset of ear and eye problems that plagued Fischer throughout her childhood years.

She didn’t know it at the time, but she was starting to go blind. She didn’t know that would lead her to writing, as well.

It wasn’t until Fischer arrived in Vancouver, at age 17, that she had her first cornea transplant.

“In the beginning, I had to wait in the hospital until somebody died. That’s a horrible thing, you know,” said Fischer.

Over the years, she has had six such transplants – four in the left eye four and two in the right. Her last transplant was seven years ago.

Now 74, she has glaucoma and is legally blind. She can only see light and darkness, and even that is becoming dimmer. Fischer acknowledges that one day her world will become black.

She’s done some serious thinking.

“I thought, ‘What do I do for the rest of my life? I am going to go nuts, I can’t just sit here,’” explained the former model and painter.

Through some soul searching around Christmas, she decided to write a book. She had the time.

Fischer called up her granddaughter and asked her to purchase a tape recorder.

Her first book, The Man Who Loves Tiramisu, was already in her head.

The story begins in Kauai, Hawaii, where a girl, Natasha, meets a boy, Joshua, while on vacation and becomes pregnant.

The story evolves from the lives of the couple as they crisscross the world from Vancouver to Europe.

It took Fischer six weeks to write her first book and a volunteer, provided to her by the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, an additional seven months to type it out.

The self-published book is being sold on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kindle and FriesenPress.

Fischer is now working on her second book, a sequel to the first.

“I decided I wanted to be happy again in my life, and being happy again meant I needed to do something,” said Fischer.

Writing makes Fischer happy.