Rod's Eye Story

In August 2007, Rod first learned that there was a medical reason to explain his poor night vision and why he was tripping over and bumping in to so many things...Retinitis Pigmentosa.

Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP) is a degenerative eye disease that can eventually lead to blindness. The first vision to go is usually night vision, followed by peripheral vision, and finally central vision. This is a genetic disease that is hereditary but there are also many incidences documented where it appears to be random. There are 10 kinds of RP.

Since we have not been able to find any other cases of RP in Rod's family our best guess, without genetic testing, is that his is not hereditary. At some point we hope to have genetic testing to find out for sure. In any case, we will monitor our kids vision from early on just to stay on top of it.

Rod was born with this disease but it wasn't until age 37 that he found out he had it. Thinking back, he remembers having tunnel vision while playing high school football but didn't give it much thought. Rod's vision loss was already pretty significant by 2007 but hasn't seemed to worsen much, if at all, in 2 1/2 years, according to the vision field scans he has had taken over the course of that time. You'd think Rod would have noticed a long time ago that he couldn't see well but we think he must have just gotten so use to it being that way he didn't know any different.

Thankfully, Rod can still work and drive (though it is best to limit it when possible) so not much in life has changed up to this point except that heis are more aware of his limitations.