Visionary Reprieve Is No Optical Illusion

Sydney Morning Herald

Thursday November 2, 2006

Julie Robotham

The first clue that something was amiss came when Irene Williams tried to thread a needle. Although she could clearly see the hole, the tip of the yarn would first veer off to the left, then the right.

Shortly after, items began disappearing from her kitchen bench. If she approached head-on, the scissors would not be there, but when viewed from the end of the bench they would reappear.

The Turramurra 80-year-old was suffering from a classic case of macular degeneration, in which the centre of the retina warps and degrades, resulting in the characteristic distortions in her central vision that have forced her to abandon driving and made her nervous of going out unaccompanied.

"I was devastated. It knocks you out emotionally," says Williams of the news that was delivered on September 18 - that the strange optical illusions were part of a progressive condition that, in the normal course of events, would steal much of her sight.

But within a week she was referred for an injection directly into her eyeball with the drug Lucentis, which crimps the abnormal proliferation of blood vessels behind the central retina. It is these that cause the distortion in the more severe "wet" form of macular degeneration and which without remediation are a certain recipe for legal - if not actual - blindness.

The procedure itself, carried out with the eye clamped open, was not as painful as Williams expected. Afterwards, for a few hours, "it feels gritty. I wouldn't choose it for pleasure!"

Two injections into the healthier eye have restored some of her sight, and the more badly affected eye will also be treated, to try to stabilise it.

Williams is hugely grateful for her reprieve, and only wishes friends could have benefited. "Some of them have ended up in a nursing home, and I feel they needn't have."

© 2006 Sydney Morning Herald

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