I had my first warning sign, regarding my eyesight, a month upon my return in January 2014, I had a haemorrhage in my right eye. It created a red mist within my field of vision accompanied by some red “worms”.
I had an assessment and referral from my optician and was seen by my ophthalmologist very quickly. Over the next few months, I had external laser treatment and relatively quickly, it had improved somewhat.
However, due to picking up the slack and not sharing the work equally, my left eye had started to show deterioration also, so laser treatments followed on this eye, and thus became the pattern of alternating treatments. It wasn’t long before
the right went bad again. Furthermore, the frequency and severity of bleeds seemed to be increasing.
In January 2016, the lack of response to external lasering prompted an internal surgery, a vitrectomy, to my right eye. Recovery was longer this time, but vision did return to a good level.
In August 2016, my teaching career officially ceased, In November, I applied to be a Christmas delivery driver for a major high street store. However, two weeks into that job, driving home from my last delivery of the evening, I had the severest bleed in my right eye to that date.
Although my teaching career had ceased the previous August, I effectively hadn’t worked since the previous Christmas. I believe my eyes weren’t strong enough for this driving job, and the subsequent pressure placed on them prompted this haemorrhaging.
This also signalled the end of my refereeing career. I had been continuing to referee in between treatments and when vision was good, but I have not participated in the game since December 2016.
Over the next 12 months, I received treatment to both eyes, but at Christmas 2017, I was more or less blind in both eyes, and I was registered as partially sighted.
At about this time, I was also losing feeling in my toes and I was having problems with my erections.