Eyes

“My optic nerve is damaged (optic nerve atrophy). Yellow is my best color.  I can see shapes and silhouettes but it depends on the color behind them. My peripheral vision is pretty good, but my central vision is blurry in the middle. Like someone’s hair blends into the wall.”

No Visual Impairment

“I’m still learning (how to deal with blindness). It’s hard to pay attention when you’re a visual learner. It started with macular degeneration. You lose your sight in the center first -  it’s all black and the periphery was like snow on a TV.  Then, I experienced retinitis pigmentosis. Tunnel vision is common with that disease. Now, all my vision is gone."

"I was 37 when it happened, at the end of a pregnancy. My optic nerve and brain were damaged due to a stroke. I can see all colors but they’re smeared into each other, all blurs and blobs. I'll see only a quarter of a word, so “women” becomes “men.” Things like doorways and shadows have no detail. Up close, I can see a face, but it’s all broken up like a Picasso painting."

No Visual Impairment

“I discovered mine about 10 or 12 years ago and had trouble seeing letters on paper and they decided it was macular degeneration (a progressive disorder that causes damage to the macula, the area of the retina used for central, detail vision)."

 "I was born with aniridia, that means the color part of the peoples’ eyes, the iris, I was born without. So my eyes are very light sensitive because the iris controls how much light comes into the eye and so I don’t have that. I just have light streaming in without any control, so I wear hats a lot and really dark sunglasses. As far as what I can see, it depends on the lighting, the time of day. The time right before the sun goes down, dusk, or twilight – that’s the best time for me because there’s not a lot of bright light but it’s not dark either. So there’s less shadows because of the light so that’s when things look the most 'crisp' to me. Which is sad that’s it’s only like 30 minutes. (laughter) But it’s ok. During the day my brain has kinda compensated since I was born with it."

"My eye condition has always been a little bit of a mystery. Growing up they always thought I had RP (Retinitis Pigmentosa is an inherited, degenerative condition that causes the light sensitive tissue of the retina to deteriorate, often causing tunnel vision and sometimes total blindness) but a few years ago I saw a new specialist who thinks I was exposed to rubella in utero, My mom was never aware that she was affected by reubella and she wouldn’t have been immunized because she was born before they did immunizations. So they feel that the way my retinas developed was characteristic of having been affected by rubella.”

No Visual Impairment

No Visual Impairment

 "I have diabetic retinopathy (damage to the blood vessels in the retina), macular degeneration (damage to the light sensitive cells in the retina called the macula, resulting in loss of central and detail vision), and a pituitary gland tumor (impinging on optic nerve)"

No Visual Impairment