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Stem Cells Curing Burn-Induced Blindness
mcgrew writes "The AP (via Yahoo) is reporting that Italian researchers can now cure blindness caused by chemical burns using the patient's own stem cells. 'The treatment worked completely in 82 of 107 eyes and partially in 14 others, with benefits lasting up to a decade so far. One man whose eyes were severely damaged more than 60 years ago now has near-normal vision.' Previously, this kind of injury needed either a corneal transplant or stem cells from someone else, both of which are plagued by problems with tissue rejection. Unfortunately, this only works for damaged corneas — so far."
http://web.archive.org/web/20060831124229/http://www.newyorker.com/archive/content/articles/060619fr_archive01
This article is long but fascinating - long story short, guy loses his vision as a young child (possibly the key point), regains it 45 years later, struggles very much to deal with sight for several years, but misses his past, sight-less life. He has a very hard time correlating objects' feel with their appearance, he has a hard time appreciating perspective, he can only navigate around his own house by using key landmarks and following preset paths, etc. Eventually he mostly gives up on being able to perceive the world visually. His state of mind plays a huge role in the situation, and visiting his childhood home helps significantly.
Maybe this is just anecdotal and I'm certainly no expert. But before reading this, my thoughts would have been exactly what you wrote, and that is not entirely accurate.