Diane Wetzel

Hello, Wow I forgot I was on this mailer. I signed up a couple of weeks or so. I'm 29 and I was born with "anopthalmus". It basically means that I was born with only one eye, literally. The left eye did not fully form. Sure I had eyelashes and an eye socket, but no eyeball itself. So all my life I have dealt with one functioning eye, and a prosthetic eye. However, my exting eye had problems as well. That was diagnosed as colaboma. Part of the retina, was missing, and my puple is oddly shaped. A few years ago I had a problem with my retina becoming detatched. I woke up one day and was scared to death. It looked like everything was underwater. So I went to the E.R. and they had me see a specialist. He was very careful with me, but did not want to do anything too risky, for fear of losing my only vision. So after awhile it calmed down, but early in 1997, the problem came back and I had to take medical leave from my job. Last year, I had several laser surgeries to put the retina back together, but each surgery wasn't helping for long. After awhile, the retinal fluid would start to leak again. So finally in July of 97, I had a vitrectemy. They had to take out all of my retinal fluid. During my healing process after each laser treatment and the general surgery,I had to have my head face down for most of the day to stablize the retina/ to keep it flat in place. Fortunatley I have had no more problems since then, except sometimes I have laser scarring in the center of my vision. I also have a stagmus which is frustrating sometimes. My vision during the difficult period was as poor as 2400. It is down to 2200 and I am legally blind. I have never been able to drive, but I am thankful that the Doctor was able to save my vision. So I can understand what it is like to not have perfect vision. Has anyone had similar stories? i'd love to hear from people. Thanks, Take Care, Sincerely, Diane Wetzel