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• To Mark L
• Posted: 2007-12-22 21:31:10 By Bradley C
• Hey man, welcome to the RP club... only special people belong here and yes you are right... we rock the socks off of most. LOL Anyways, now that my attempt to be funny has fallen short once again I posted this message awhile back and since I couldn't come up wiht any good advice I figured the best method is you can learn from some of our personal experiences. So here is the post, please read it and grasp the concept. Take care man and if you need anything let me know!
  
  MESSAGE POSTED EARLIER THIS YEAR !
  
  The past couple of weeks I've had some real iisues with facing myself and some of the aspects of my life. I'm learing that although I have a eye disease that is currently impossible to cure, I can't let this control my life. You see not only does our disease affect the people that are closest to us, so can our attitudes toward our disease. I learned that it is hard enough on the people that love you the most just dealing with the everyday things that you go through with the disease. Then on top of that, for the most of us, we have a really poor attitude toward certain situations. So this in turn makes it twice as hard on the person that is helping us get through this time in our lives.
  I've also struggled with my beliefs the last couple weeks. Before I start I'm not trying to push God on anyone or any way shape or form trying to push a religon on you. These are my opinions. I've been raised a christian my whole life, and I attend church regularly. One thing that I'm learning is that for me to be able to live a happy well meaning life. I have to be able to accept that I have a eye disease and no, things aren't going to be the same for me as they are other people. This is opposite of what my church tells me to believe. I should believe that God can and will heal my eyes and that I shouldn't speak the eye disease over myself. So they kind of collide with each other. On one hand I need to learn to accept the disease and live my life to the fullest and on the other hand I need to live my life like I don't have an eye disease and proclaim that I don't. The times that my eyes have been prayed for is something crazy. I keep asking myself is there something that I need to do, do I lack faith, what am I doing wrong? This is becoming a real issue in my life.
  So saying all of that, I just wanted to let you guys know that our eye disease is hard enough on the people around us. They want a cure for us just as bad as we want it for ourselves. Let's take the inititive to realize that the people aroudn us hurt to. That other people have real issues in their life. Understand that when the person your walking with is only trying to help you when they tell you there is a step to watch for, that there is a person your about to run into, that it isn't wise for you to walk to the store alone, and my wife's famous "arm tug" when i'm about to run into something. They don't do these things to aggrivate us. They are trying to help and instead of us giving them grief with remarks like "I KNOW", "I CAN SEE THAT", "IT'S DAYLIGHT, I DON'T NEED YOUR HELP", "I CAN SEE JUST FINE". Let's just be thankful that we have someone to help us along the way.

• Re: To Mark L
• Posted: 2007-12-23 08:18:37 By Benny M
• I guess I missed it the first time but it does have a lot of truth to it.

• Re: To Mark L
• Posted: 2007-12-23 12:06:22 By Mark L
• I fully understand your message. It's day 3 and I've had the same thoughts. I've always wanted to be part of a exclusive club ! I guess the only thing we can hope is for a cure. My doctor seemed confident but I'm not as sure.....
  
  When did you discover you had RP and what is your current situation ?
  
  Mark

• Re: Re: To Mark L
• Posted: 2007-12-23 20:54:23 By Bradley C
• I found out that I had RP when I was 12. We always knew I had something wrong with my eyes at a young age but with glasses I could still see well. So at the age of 12 I noticed a significant difference and went to the eye doctor and was diagnosed. I am currently 25 years old and just now I've had to leave my job. It got to the point where I was putting myself in harms way and others as well. I'm married to a very loving and caring wife. She completes me in so many ways that it's almost unbelievable. When I was younger I could do things like baseball, football, I was even the all-state soccer goalie for Alabama. Things have changed quite a bit since then. I attended college and I am Cisco CCNA certified. Now that I am out of work I just do website design on the side with my disability. If your intrested here's a couple sites I've built.
  http://www.theclarion.org
  http://www.sambugman.com
  
  There's several that's just two I've done.
  
  More about my eyes I guess. I can see 20/30 in both my right and left eye, but my peripheral vision in horrible. My right eye I've got about 9-10 degrees left and my left eye has about 10-11 degrees of visual field. The weird thing I guess is I have a "doughnut like vision". I can see on the extreme outer edges of my field and the center is there but there is a void area between the extreme edge and the center. So it's like I have 10 degrees from the center I can see then it goes out then I can see in the very corners of my eye. Anything that I can do to help you out or any info I can pass along just let me know. You might want to get to know Darran Z... he is a awesome guy and very knowledgeable. Have a merry christmas.

• Re: Re: Re: To Mark L
• Posted: 2007-12-23 23:06:15 By Mark L
• Bradley,
  Hey I checked out your websites you have done and they look great ! I've got to find out my vision field. I can drive without problems and at this point I don't have any issues with driving at night. I guess that I better enjoy it while I still can. My wife also is the cornerstone of my life. She has the best attitude about all of this. I know that we will have our challenges in the future BUT I'm sure we will work through it. I'm committed to starting a family ( we are adopting ) and I think the most important thing is just being a good dad.
  
  Thanks and wish you and your family a very Merry Christmas
  
  

• Re: Re: Re: To Mark L
• Posted: 2007-12-24 15:35:56 By Paul S
• This doughnut effect is common on field vision and it is what causes many RP people to overestimate their ability to see to the sides.
  
  Combined with the slow progression and subtle adjustments in behavior such as scanning back and forth more often give a false sense of comfort and keeps people driving past a reasonable point.
  
  Even with 3-degrees of vision I still see the occasional object way off to the side.
  
  Paul