Lorna's Story

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One day in late 2014, Lorna Small and her husband were driving in the car when she remarked “why are those streetlights all bent?”.

Lorna had never heard of wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD) before she started seeing straight lines as bent and wobbly. Her optometrist acted very quickly when she attended for an eye exam, phoning the local hospital to arrange an urgent appointment in the macular clinic the following week. 

The treatment for wet AMD is delivered by injection into the eye. “The first injection is definitely quite nerve-wracking as you don’t know what is going to happen”, Lorna reflects. “But I have been getting them every few weeks for years now, I think around 50 injections in total, so you just get used to it”.  

Lorna developed wet AMD in her other eye in 2018, but the injections have managed to preserve good vision in one eye. “My vision in one eye is still pretty good, so I can’t really think of anything that I can’t do. I read a lot and that’s not a problem. I’m painting our garden fence at the moment without any trouble. I did at one point struggle with my computer, but my son got me a very big computer screen and showed me how to change the size of the letters which has worked really well”. Lorna uses her computer for regular Zoom video calls which she uses to keep in touch with her sisters. “I would say that at the moment I don’t have a problem with my eyesight so long as I maintain my injections every 4 weeks. We live 64 miles from the hospital so on occasion the travel can be difficult.” 

For Lorna and her family, sight loss is something that they have experienced before. “I remember my granny could not see very well. When I was about ten years old, my three sisters and I paid our usual visit to granny on New Year’s Day and instead of giving us a ginger wine she poured each of us a glass of port. She had misread the labels on the bottles! Our dad had to collect us!”