![]() I asked him what resources or treatments or vitamins there were available, and he said, “I’m sorry, but the nearest medical advancements are at least 20 years out.” He scribbled a number for the Center for the Blind on a piece of paper and left the room. The doctor really only addressed my husband. They did a test where they place contact lenses with wires on your eyes and then they put you in a dark room and measure the electrical currents - it was a shocking scene. A group of observing students trailed in, and he’s explaining to them that this is an advanced case, as if I were a lab rat. The doctor propped me up like a monkey so he could get a good look at my disease-addled retinas. The waiting room was full of scary-looking old men and women with eye patches and canes. I just remember running out, getting in my car, and going home to cry in my basement. They were dark with a small circle in the middle, and told me that I was already legally blind. He showed me images representing what my eyes could see. When she started the machine, I couldn’t see any dots, and I was annoyed with her because I felt like she couldn’t do her job or the machine was broken. I thought the assistant was young and spacey. The next day I went back for a visual field test, the one where you stare at the dots and they give you a clicker. What It’s Like to Remember Almost Everything That Has Ever Happened to Youĭo you think you were in shock or denial at that point? How’d you confirm that you have the disease? I made my first-ever eye-doctor appointment when I was 37 years old. Then I sideswiped a car on the freeway, and during a game of racketball with my husband, I couldn’t see balls that were whizzing right past my head. In 2002, after the birth of my second daughter, I went on a hike and I kept tripping up. My eyesight was always fine, except I haven’t been able to see in the dark since I was about 18. I’d bump into things and wouldn’t recognize people on the street. When I was in my late 30s, I became a little clumsy. Science of Us recently spoke with Ingrid Ricks, a 47-year-old woman who lives in Seattle and was diagnosed with the disease in 2004, about her experiences. ![]() There’s no cure, but there are experimental treatments and small clinical studies being done, including an acupuncture study recently spearheaded by eye acupuncturist Andy Rosenfarb and researchers at Johns Hopkins University. The condition usually first manifests itself as a loss of night vision, followed by diminished periphery eyesight and, eventually, blindness. It’s slow-moving, so an early diagnosis can mean years of uncertainty while one waits to see if he or shewill actually lose their eyesight. Retinitis pigmentosa ( RP) is a group of inherited eye diseases that cause degeneration of the retina’s photoreceptor cells.
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