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OGDEN — A few weeks ago at Wiseguys Comedy Club in Ogden, stage hypnotist Shawn Paulsen turned a half-dozen adults into kindergarteners. He had them rapping gibberish. He convinced them they could put their hands through a brick wall.
Those were not his biggest tricks, however. It was this: Paulsen convinced most of the audience that he wasn’t blind.
“You know, sometimes I question it myself,” said his daughter, Arandalyn Sorensen, “but, yes, I have seen him walk into my front door, so I’m positive he’s blind.”
Paulsen, a former police officer-turned-comedian-turned hypnotist, said he first noticed something was wrong when his eyesight in his left eye started to fail three years ago.
“And throughout a couple of weeks, it transitioned to my right eye and within six weeks, I’d lost 90 percent of my vision,” he said.
Paulsen was informally diagnosed with a rare condition called mitochondrial encephalomyopathy lactic acidosis and stroke-like episodes.
“It affects my eyes, it affects my hearing and it affects mostly the left side of my body like a stroke would,” he said. “It’s like a light switch is turned off. There’s no energy to that side of my body anymore.”
It is progressive and, although it is so rare no one can say with much certainty what will happen, it is considered a terminal illness.
“One day, my brain may shut the heart off and just not turn it back on,” Paulsen said.
He said he thought life was over — until he realized it wasn’t.
“My grandkids would come over and I just realized I need to be here need to for them and that’s what kept me going,” Paulsen said.
He relearned how to play golf, hunt and fish. He wrote an autobiography titled “Why Not Me?”
“Why not me? I’m just as human as everybody else and being human things like this happen to us,” Paulsen said.
He learned how to be a blind hypnotist.
“There was a time when he really thought he was going to give it (his act) up and all of us rallied together and said, ‘No, we will we will make this work,’” Sorensen said.
Paulsen, his family and friends make it work … with florescent orange tape.
Due to the strange nature of his condition, Paulsen can still see fluorescent orange and pink. His assistants put orange tape around the stage, on chairs, on his microphone and props. As audience members enter the club, they’re given orange or pink wristbands. Paulsen uses those bright colors to navigate his way around the stage and through his act.
“My life now is what do I do with what I have,” he said.
Paulsen lost his vision, but not his sense of humor.
“Humor is what keeps me going,” he said. “People will say something to me and I’ll say, ‘Well, I didn’t see it.’ A lot of times, I’ll to start yelling out ‘Marco’ and they’ll yell ‘Polo.’ My comedy is my way of trying to put people at ease so they know that it is OK and it’s OK to laugh about it, Ok to talk about it.”
At the end of his act, Paulsen reveals the punchline of his biggest joke — that the hypnotist is blind and has a terminal illness.
“Live for every moment because you never know when that moment’s going to end,” he told his audience. “Don’t give up, don’t surrender and whatever else, always, always, always if plans don’t go the way they should be, make new plans.”
Paulsen works as a hypnotist and a motivational speaker. He’s scheduled to perform at Wiseguys in Ogden June 23 and 24. He’ll be in Huntsville on the Fourth of July and at Clinton’s Heritage Days July 16.
