My life behind broken eyes
My life in short bites #1
Finally I've made it, and still it's hard to think, I have made it to half a century, with very little eye sight, despite I don't know how many close calls like crossing the road at the most inappropriate times, like when a car is practically on top of you. Like, going for a dip at the beach, and realizing you can't see the shore (even though you are only a few meters from it) oh and can't feel the bottom "GULP". Or the time as a kid I was with cousins climbing paper bark trees at the trailer park in August Western Australia when I decided to jump down onto what I thought looked like the ground but was in fact a swamp with very deep water and lots of debris under the surface. And that is not even the tip of the iceberg of things that have nearly killed me. I guess now would be a good time to explain why I can't see real good. I have a condition that is call Congenital Optic Atrophy with Myopia, which is just a fancy schmanzy way of say short sighted as well. To keep it simple and not bore you to complete tears, the optic nerve behind both eyes are covered in nerve ending and for some unknown reason a great majority have died. So I can see a little and I mean a very little in my right eye (less than 5 percent vision) and just a little more in my left eye (Just under 10 percent). One of the questions I get asked is how old were you when your eyesight was discovered. I was in first grade at the tender age of 6 when the teacher noticed I wouldn't do any work, in particular when she write things on the chalk board. The school nurse was called to asses my eye sight and arranged an eye test which was closely followed by a meeting with my parents to inform them that I simply couldn't see very much at all. This is when everything changed for a young lad. I was moved from a regular primary school and now sent to another school, Lathlain Primary school funnily enough in Lathlain, a suburb just South of Perth. The reason for the move was that Lathlain has two classes especially set up to cater for children in lower and upper primary with sight loss. So the scene is set, you now know a little about what happened when I started this journey. So join me in the next installment of my story My life behind broken eyes, and hey thanks reading. In the meantime as I say everyday on my radio show, take it easy but do take it ok....
Kind regards
PK :)
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