Game Journal #121 - Life? Update

Hi everyone! Welcome back to my game journal series. I got some work done on that animation, still got some more left to do though! So the hiatus will continue.

Here is some rough animation from it!

I'm still kinda doing layouts because I got distracted a few times during the week. But now I really am just going to work on it all the time. Same for my game. Well, the reason why is kinda... I'll explain.

So do you remember last time where I talked about my eye condition? Well, I went to the doctor today. And there's good news and bad news. Good news, it wasn't as costly as I thought it'd be, so I'm very grateful for that. (Also my doctor scolded me for not having insurance, "You need insurance if you have an eye condition, it's very expensive!") Bad news is pretty much everything else. Lol.

So, if you remember last time, I have one good eye (right) and one bad eye (left.) My good eye started getting worse so that's why I made a doctor's appointment. But to my surprise, when I went, only my left eye was treated. My doctor told me that even though my right eye was worsening, he couldn't do anything about it because there was no blood vessel leakage. (The way the eye treatment works is that it prevents blood from leaking behind your retina.) In other words, I'm stuck with my vision the way it is now.

It's still not too bad, the spot in the middle is still very small, but my overall vision isn't as good (apparently it's 20/40 now) and I got prescribed glasses. I really don't like the idea of glasses... I was the only person in my family that didn't wear them (which I found to be ironic because I was the one who ended up with the eye disease.) But yeah. I wasn't too surprised because I did find that I've been squinting a lot more these past two weeks. In fact I'm squinting right now typing this. Lol.

I don't really know what to think. I feel more than ever that I'm on borrowed time in terms of my eyesight. I always thought that medicine could keep my vision stable, but to hear "There's nothing I can do," is very demoralizing. Thankfully it's progressing very very slowly. I am thankful that I had 20/20 for 24 years though, I did a lot in that time. And I don't think I'll be legally blind for at least a decade or so. Man this is kinda awkward to type...

Anyway, I thought to take pictures of what the inside of my eye looks like this time so you can see:

A healthy macula.

My left eye's macula.

Do you see how the bottom part is being pushed up? That's the leaking blood vessels. My right eye had a bump underneath (caused by my disease) but it wasn't leaking.

I almost didn't even want to get my left eye treated because it never gets any better, but my doctor really wanted me to, so I did. I don't know.

Next time I should have that animation done. If you were wondering, "is there any hope that your disease could be cured?" then yes there is. I'm waiting on the clinical trials for the gene therapy that should cure it that are happening this year. They've already cured my disease in a dog, so the only thing left is to try it on humans and get it approved by the FDA. Here is the dog article: New gene therapy corrects a form of inherited macular degeneration in canine model

Here is information on the gene therapy: UW researchers devise approach to treat rare, incurable form of blindness - School of Medicine and Public Health

Here is information on the company that is doing it: IRD Programs - Opus Genetics

I am very hopeful that gene therapy will work because a few different eye diseases were already cured with it. So now I just have to wait for it to be available. Then of course the treatment will (literally) probably cost a million dollars, so that's fun. Maybe by then I'll have Joe Maverick released and be swimming in money.

Sorry if this was depressing or anything like that. I really don't like having to talk about stuff like this. Next journal will be much more optimistic!