My first diagonosis

Its hard to recall what it was like to be able to see normally now. i remember when I was in grade 1, our school had periodic eye examinations to let the parents know if their child required glasses. Back then, even though I did not have 20/20 vision, I was able to manage to see about 20/25 (approximately the 8th line) but because I did not have 20/20 vision, the school would send home a memo notifying my parents that I may need glasses.

My mom also said, as a child, when I watched tv I would tilt my head down to watch tv. She didn't think much about it, but later realizes it may be because my weaker central vision. I know for a fact that afer Stargardt's had tkaen its toll on my vision, I NEED to use peripheral vision to see clearer and hence my head is always tilted upwards or downwards slightly to help me see better.

Initially, when glasses didn't help restoremy vision to 20/20, my parents thought I had "Lazy Eye" and I ended up going to a correctioanl clinic to rehabilitate my eyes. (Noboday knew better, and lack of knowledge in ophthalmology led to this "incorrect" diagonosis. By this time around Grade 2, my eyesight began deteriorirating. I went down to around 20/30 (around the 5th line). But we still couldn't find out what the problem was, and the Lazy Eye treatments did not have an effect.

However, soon after I went into the clinic, I had moved to Canada. At which time, I began going to the Sick Children's Hospital to have further examinations. Even when I first moved to Canada, I still remember wearing the eye patch for the correction of Lazy Eye.

After my first visit to the specialists in Sick Children's Hospital, they began running bunch of different tests. Eventually, they concluded that it was Stargardt's and there was no cure. They told me it was heriditary and wanted to check my parents to search for hte gene, but at the end, they coudln't fidn anything and concluded it may have been a skipped generation gene that was passeddown to me. By this time I was almost 16, and had pretty much deteriorated down to 20/150 (second/third line)

All I knew was, I was beginning to see less, I had some sort of genetic mutation called Stargardt's, it only happens 1 in every 20,000 people. I hated the world for it~