Shining Stargardt's

Q: So, What exactly is wrong with your eyes?

A: First of all, I like to think of myself as "differently sighted." (JK, LOL.)

I have what's commonly known as Stargardt's Disease. Okay, maybe not "commonly known," since barely anyone has ever heard of it... but there are other names, and that one happens to be easy to say (if not spell).

I wanted to link to the Wikipedia page to explain it, but it's not very helpful. SO here's how it's been explained to me:

If the eye were a camera (a traditional camera, not one of those stupid digital things), the retina would be the film. Light bounces off an object and travels through the rest of the eye to hit the retina to make the image.

The macula is the center of the retina, and it deals with everything in your central vision, including the most accurate stuff that you use to identify words, faces, and random twisted metal on the side of the road. While you use your peripheral (outer) vision to perceive a moving object coming from the side, you use the central vision to identify things.

SOme of us are lucky enough to have "macular degeneration," where the macula -- clearing house for all that useful central vision -- gets eaten away. Most people with macular degeneration get it when they're older, and the onset is pretty fast. In my case, Stargardt's, it happens before the age of 20 -- or, in my case, before the age of 10 -- and sticks around for the rest of your life.

One advantage of STargardt's, as opposed to the older and more common kind, is that the damage is often pretty limited. In my case, I just have a small blind spot. I've met other people with the same condition, and it seems to affect everyone a little differently; mine stopped its progress when I was about 12, and some people get progressively worse. So, actually, I'm pretty lucky.

At the moment, there's no treatment, and I don't really expect one. Most of us Sytargardt's people do pretty well; we're reasonably successful, often a little bookish (ironic, because we can't really read much), and unusually friendly. There doesn't seem to be any great urgency to find a cure, and I'll probably be OK as is for the next several decades Still, the thought does cross my mind of what it would be like to have normal sight. Now, what exactly does that mean, again?