Would you trade part of your life expectancy to be rid of strabismus?
Written on November 3, 2007 – | by Lois (admin)
David Marshall writes:
Dr. David Guyton at the Wilmer Eye Institue of Johns Hopkins sent this to me along with some other articles, but this one is a very powerful reminder of how crippling strabismus can be to those of us who suffer from it. It is a study conducted by George R Beauchamp, MD, Joost Felius, PhD, David R Stager, Sr, MD,and Cynthia L Beauchamp, MD from the Department of Ophthalmology, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (Dr G. Beauchamp, Dr Felius, Dr Stager, Dr C. Beauchamp), and the Retina Foundation of the Southwest (Dr Felius), Dallas, Texas.
This study shows 60% of those studied indicated willingness to trade part of their life expectancy in return for being rid of strabismus and its associated effects. You can find a link here.
It speaks volumes about how debilitating strabismus can be.
This interesting item above is shared by David Marshall (who also provided some input for last week’s post.) The study linked in David’s item is called “The Utility of Strabismus in Adults.” “Utility” is defined in the article as “quality-of-life weight.”
[Update 7/9/2010: When I published this, I never expected people to actually answer the question posed in the title. During the time I was away with illness, I continued to approve comments to the blog. I am surprised and saddened that so many responded, "Yes," to that question. This answer pierces my heart with the struggle that many with turned eyes face every day.
My personal answer to that question is, "No." Of course, I'm 63, so I don't have a huge amount of life left to trade at this point. But, beyond that, I have always been challenged by struggle, and the older I get the more exciting life is in spite of my vision and other health problems. I love to find "work-arounds." If one door closes, I keep opening others until I find one with good things behind it. Keeps me busy, keeps my mind off of my difficulties, and the pay-off is great. Give it a try!]
Photo credit: G & A Scholiers
I often wonder if my strabismus is much like a shadow on the wall. There are days when it looms so large over me all I want to do is hide from the world. As it creeps toward me, it whispers those dreaded words, “You’re different!”. When I allow this shadow to cripple me with fear, it convinces me that I am somehow less of a person because of my condition. At the very least, I grab the sunglasses and pray no one asks why I’m wearing them indoors.
The following item is edited from a letter posted by shayla last month in our
According to the European research news resource, AlphaGalileo.Org, “Researchers at the University of Bradford are seeking volunteers for a study into the condition ‘amblyopia’ which is more commonly known as ‘lazy eye’.”
Our site has been down over a week after an upgrade of the blogging software. Part was due to incompatibilities with some of our older plugins and our theme template as well. So we’ve had a face lift! I hope you’ll find our site easier to use and more helpful than ever. I’m still tweaking things, and if you see something that needs fixed or a feature you’d like to recommend, feel free to share.
