February is low vision awareness month. I thought this was a good opportunity to talk about my eye condition, Stargardts disease, that is taking away my precious eyesight. Stargardts disease is an incurable, progressive, genetic juvenile eye condition, so I have this through no fault of my own. I had regular eye tests my whole life, but nothing was ever picked up until I was 31, even though I never had 20/20 vision. Stargardts disease is caused by a fault in…
Today is world sight day and ironically mental health awareness day too. As most of you know, I was diagnosed with Stargardts 2 years ago. Unfortunately, there is nothing that can be done for my eye disease, no treatment and as of yet, no cure. I have in those 2 years, lost 2 lines of the eye chart in both eyes and am only just hanging on to my driving licence. Stargardts is robbing me slowly of not only my…
From the 23rd September until the 29th September, it is National eye health week. Other than these orange blue light blocking glasses, I look the same as everyone else. My eyes are shiny, bright and on the surface, they look completely healthy. 2 years ago, almost to the day, I never in a million years thought I would be told by an eye specialist that I was going blind from Stargardts disease. My condition is rare and unfortunately, there is…
February is low vision awareness month, so I thought I would do this blog post explaining some of the terms used when discussing vision loss and blindness. Whenever I tell people I have a problem with my eyes and am losing my central vision, a lot of the time I am asked how that is possible and they would never have known, because I have lovely eyes and they don’t look like there is anything wrong. When we think of…
As 2018 draws to an end, it has made me reflect on the year that I have had. When I was diagnosed with Stargardts in 2017, for a good few months it honestly felt like someone had ended my life. I was lost, confused and scared for much of the rest of that year following my diagnosis and I was consumed with the feeling of ‘why me’. I was grateful when my little boy suggested that we do something to…
I have to be honest and say, I adore Christmas time, December is my favourite month of the year. Last Christmas I felt like I wasted the month by being very disorganised and dwelling on things too much and making myself stressed by trying too much to please others. This year I have already wrapped most of the gifts I have bought people and have decided that it will just be the 3 of us eating at home on Christmas…
Today is white cane day. A lot of people living with Stargardts can manage very well on a daily basis without a long cane. Of course, there are exceptions who need one, or a guide dog, as everyone’s vision loss is different. A lot of people with central vision loss do use a signal cane though, which is a short small cane that can be held and doesn’t touch the floor. This is to alert others around them that they…