To see and be seen
Post categories: Arts and Entertainment
| 16:12 UK time, Wednesday, 24 May 2006
Tonight, Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ ONE's One Life series tells the story of the Holden family. 17 year old Tara has , a rare eye condition which means that she is registered blind. The only way her sight might be improved is through surgery, which involves the taking of stem sells from her mother's eye and placing them in Tara's. Tara is having second thoughts about the process and is unsure about regaining her vision.
Tara's older sister Terri has an underdeveloped jaw, caused by radiotherapy she received to treat cancer as a child. She too is going under the knife for a corrective procedure.
Tune in to Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ ONE tonight at 10.40pm, to learn the full story.
Comments
Classic comment from Tara's mum who referring to the fact her daughter may lose her sight if she didn't have the operation said she'd be able to continue to play goalball but what else would she be able to do....
For someone who had a partially sighted daughter who was clearly getting on with life in a very positive way it seemed like quite a negative view of what partially sighted/blind people can do.
If she thinks like that then it is hardly surprising that non disabled people who don't have contact with disabled people think we're one stage away from death in terms of quality of life. Ugh.
I think that it is wonderful that Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ is doing programs on Aniridia because it is nice for people to atleast have heard of it and maybe better understand it. My only problem is the definition that was used in the previous story(aniridia is a rare eye condition in which the iris is completley missing) this is not usually the case, usually aniridics have partial iris in one or both eyes. Also the mischaracterization that all those with aniridia will become blind. Although most aniridics have low or impaired vision, some of them have normal or very near normal vision. I have a 15 month old son named Luke who has aniridia most of his iris is gone in both eyes, but he does have a small ring of blue iris surrounding his pupil he is one of the few that so far has very normal vision and I would just like people to know that there is a wide variety of vision and iris size for aniridics.
Darcy, mother to Luke 15mos