January 2009

After visiting eye doctors in Austin, including the his regular eye doctor, Dr. Quintanilla, and Dr. Levitan at the Austin Retina Associates, Rod was referred to Dr. Lewis at Baylor Medical Center in Houston. In January 2009, we visited Dr. Lewis. He ran all his own tests and came to the same conclusion...Retinitis Pigmentosa. He wasn't able to offer any treatments and just the hope that sooner than later there would be a scientific breakthrough to treat or cure RP and other degenerative eye diseases.

Sadness and worry over what the future holds for Rod and our family was all we could think of. Life would continue as normal except for the fact that we now knew with more certainty that our lives would eventually be very different. There is no norm to the rate at which vision is lost with RP. Blindness could happen in a year...in 20...or never, there was no way to know.