I’ll keep my story short but I noticed something was wrong when I was constantly cleaning my glasses because I thought they were dirty and that’s why I couldn’t see even with them on. It was not the glasses.

Hey friend, I began to notice over a rather long period of time that I was gradually becoming much more reliant on my peripheral vision (I was positioning my head at strange angles to try to get a clearer view, increased loss of depth perception, no longer being able to recognise faces/features or being able to differentiate colours, etc.).

This is just my personal experience, speaking from the perspective of being visually impaired and living with uveitis, glaucoma, scleritis and cataracts.

My ex-boyfriend had a condition that caused him to lose his central vision. I thought he gave a really good explanation which helped me grasp a bit more than I had from most technical ones. If you’ve had average/normal site in the past, imagine the image of when you’re driving down a road and you see all the stuff at the very farthest point of the road ahead of you. He said that’s how his typical vision looked. The things on the outside were in focus, but the central vision looked super far away and out of focus.

LHON, prior 20/20 vision:
First sign was unable to read my computer screen with one eye closed. Blurry text but other eye was compensating so didn’t notice right away. This was quickly followed by enlarging scotoma, loss of color and movement to second eye.

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This might demonstrate it: $1

Using peripheral vision to do everything. You can see to walk, and grab things, etc. But you have no detail. I can't read or see numbers unless greatly magnified, but I can still cook, watch tv (sort of) I even go to the shooting range.