Obviously two years on, when I'd brought my sugars under control and they were running normally for the first time in, well, five years, something like that. Drastic, apparently drastic changes to your body and the way you operate your body do have an effect. And I ended up going blind. I ended up losing my sight.
And what happened with that was, it was a few years after I'd brought everything under control. I was on holiday with my friend in Greece, visiting another friend for her birthday. And when you go abroad, your sugars are a bit up and down, all over the place, because of the heat and the different food and things like that. And I noticed that my vision was getting slightly, it was slightly blurred. And I thought, 'Well, okay, this is fine. It's just because my sugars are a bit haywire it's a bit blurred'. I wore glasses anyway, for driving and reading. And then after about a week I really started to worry. Because in actual fact I'd only been to the optician about two weeks before I came back, before I went on holiday. And she'd checked the backs of my eyes and everything. I didn't need a new prescription. So after a week I was slightly concerned. I remember coming down from my room one day to find my friend by the pool. And I couldn't actually pick her out. I couldn't pick her out because it was all so fuzzy. And I think that day I was really really frightened. But I put it to the back of my mind till the holiday had finished. I just tried to be very rigid with my sugars. Which was quite difficult, but, you know, you have to do.
So I got home and I went straight back to the optician. And when she looked in the back of my eye she started to see little tiny blood vessels growing in the backs of my eye. And she said, 'Don't worry because it happens with every diabetic. Every diabetic who's had diabetes this number of years will get these blood vessels. It will just have to be lasered and then it will be fine'. So I went to the diabetic clinic for them to have a check. And they said, 'Oh, it's fine. It's nothing to worry about. You'll be fine'. But two months on I went back for another diabetic check and basically my eyes had just exploded with blood vessels. And the doctor was quite concerned at how quickly that had happened. So I had the various pictures taken of the backs of my eyes. And they started lasering blood vessels in the back, in the back of my eyes, trying to seal them, because they leaked out blood, which is what causes you to go blind. But as quick as they were lasering them, the blood vessels were just growing and growing and growing. Eventually I lost the vision in my left eye. That was after a couple of months. And they'd said my right eye was going to be fine. 'Don't worry. We'll be able to save your right eye'. They started lasering that. And within a week I had a haemorrhage, which caused me to lose all vision in it.
So I was sort of registered, registered blind, which was at the age of 23. |