she was not able to see any light or objects.  Likewise the same tests found that there was no vibration or "air conduction" in either ear.  Whichever disease Helen Keller experienced, it robbed her of her vision and hearing completely.  Because she was so young, the inability to hear rendered her mute without a conduit to learn speech.  

Helen got an illness when she was about a year old that left her blind and deaf.

Helen started life as a normal baby.  She walked at one year old.  She was very intelligent.  However, when she was nineteen months old, she contracted a terrible illness.  She recovered, but with a tragic loss of senses.

Then, in the dreary month of February, came the illness which closed my eyes and ears and plunged me into the unconsciousness of a new-born baby. They called it acute congestion of the stomach and brain. The doctor thought I could not live.  (Ch. 1)

The exact illness is not specified, but doctors called it “acute congestion of the stomach and brain.”  They did not expect Helen to live.  She was in great pain.  She recovered, but her intellectual growth was stagnated by the fact that she could no longer hear or see.  It is hard to learn language when you can’t hear.  Helen had not been talking much yet since she wasn’t even two years old.  She had to learn to make do.

My hands felt every object and observed every motion, and in this way I learned to know many things. Soon I felt the need of some communication with others and began to make crude signs. (Ch. 2)

Poor little Helen tried to communicate with her parents, and they did their best to accommodate her needs.  It became clear that something more would have to be done.  This was a case for experts.  Since there was no school for the blind and deaf nearby, her parents sent for a teacher. 

Anne Sullivan was able to teach Helen how to speak, read, and write.  She taught her sign language by spelling into her hand.  Helen’s first word was “water” and she blossomed from there. Her intelligence made her a good student, although she could also be stubborn.  She came to love and rely on Anne.

The Story of My Life is Helen Keller's autobiographical account of the first twenty two years of her life. It is NOT a novel as a novel is a fictitious story which includes elements of real life making it seemingly believable. Helen Keller's inspirational account of her struggle with blindness and deafness and her determination not to let her disabilities define her is very real.

Helen wrote this book in her early twenties, whilst a student at Radcliffe College where she would eventually graduate at age 22, with honors. This book is just one of the ways she contributed to the betterment of people with disabilities, women who in the early 1900s were often uneducated and any person really who was faced with challenges. The reader is left with a new respect for the "gift" of sight but also, hopefully an appreciation for all the senses. Helen proved that "barriers .... could in time be swept away."     

Helen Keller remembers a happy childhood.

An older Helen Keller describes her memories of early childhood as a “few impressions [that] stand out vividly from the first years of my life” (ch 1).  She lived in a “tiny house consisting of a large square room and a small one, in which the servant slept.”  She lived with her father, Captain Keller, and her mother, on the family homestead.  She describes her childhood idyllically.

The Keller homestead, where the family lived, was a few steps from our little rose-bower. It was called "Ivy Green" because the house and the surrounding trees and fences were covered with beautiful English ivy. Its old-fashioned garden was the paradise of my childhood. (ch 1)

For Helen, the illness happened very early in her childhood.  She was only 19 months old when she was taken with the illness that cost her sight and hearing.  After that, she entered a prison of darkness that was only relieved by senses of touch and smell.  She lived this way until Anne Sullivan came to teach her language.  She was intelligent enough that it did not take long for her to catch on to words and eventually write her autobiography.

At nineteen months old in 1882, Helen Keller, who had been a normal, healthy baby, fell ill with what doctors described as "an acute congestion of the stomach and the brain." It is conjectured that this may have been scarlet fever or meningitis. 

In her autobiography Helen writes,

One brief spring, musical with the sound of robin and mockingbird, one summer rich in fruit and roses, one autumn of gold and crimson sped by and left their gifts at the feet of an eager, delighted child. Then, in the dreary month of February, came the illness that closed my eyes and ears....

However, before she lost her sight and hearing, the precocious Helen had learned several words, such as "tea" and, of course, "water--wah, wah" which came to be the link to her understanding of the sign language which Anne Sullivan taught her. Fortunately for Helen, hers was a redoubtable spirit and a quick mind, so she was able to learn from her mother who had her touch things and taught her to imitate the actions of making what she wanted such as turning a handle for ice cream or cutting with a knife for bread. 

After an illness as a toddler left Helen Keller both blind and deaf, hopes for her future initially seemed futile. When you put them together, the inability to see or hear mean that communication seems impossible. Luckily, her blindness did not affect her in this way forever, because when she was about six years old, Helen was referred to Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, who told the family about a school in Boston where she could get the kind of help that she needed.

It was her teacher at Perkins Institution for the Blind, Miss Anne Mansfield Sullivan, who changed Anne's life forever. The first thing she tried was giving Helen a doll and spelling out the letters that made up the word onto Anne's hand. This didn't work well, because while Anne was able to replicate the letters, she did not make the connection between the word and the object.

The defining moment for Helen came when Sullivan took her outside and put her one hand under running water while spelling out the word "water" on her other hand. The connection between the two was clear, and Helen understood that the words she had learned to spell were the names of the things around her.

From that point on, Helen began to find ways to overcome her blindness, as well as her deafness. While these factors would always have an effect on her, this effect became so much less once she found an initial way to communicate.

The Story of My Life is Helen Keller's autobiographical account of the first twenty-two years of her life. Realising that she is privileged compared to other blind and deaf children and that she receives countless opportunities that others like her do not, Helen wants to share her story in the hope of inspiring others and as a token of appreciation to all the role players in her success.

Helen, in her own words is much like any other young child and reminds the reader that "I came, I saw, I conquered."(ch 1) However, in the February of the year when she turns 2 she is struck by a mysterious illness  "which closed my eyes and ears and plunged me into the unconsciousness of a new-born baby."(ch1) So from the age of nineteen months she is left blind and deaf. According to doctors, she was not expected to live through this "acute congestion of the stomach and brain" (ch 1) and it is only after her fever subsides and she begins to make a recovery that her blindness and deafness is noticed.