Hi everyone! For those of you that don’t know, a couple of years ago I developed a rare disease called AZOOR (Acute Zonal Occult Outer-Retinopathy), which has been affecting my eyesight since its onset. There is no cure, but I have been on immunosuppressants to try and slow down/plateau its progression. Despite this, my left eye developed relatively severe cystoid macular edema, which I received a few rounds of steroid injections into my eye to try and treat. While the treatment was overall successful and did restore a lot of my central vision in my left eye (yay!), as a side effect of the shots, I have developed Ptosis of my left eyelid—which is a fancy way of saying my eyelid muscle has been affected, and I can no longer hold my eye open properly.
Between working with kaleidoscopes and my passion being painting, I have been struggling to cope with my already reduced eyesight being even further impaired. I have decided to pursue getting Ptosis repair surgery in order to restore the muscle function of my eyelid. The starting cost of this is $3900. I have been saving as much as I can, but between just finally paying off my spinal taps, brain and spinal scans, and continually paying for my treatment at the Mayo Clinic, I realized that I might need some help to raise the money for the surgery. Any and all contributions towards my goal would mean I am one step closer to having that much more visibility out of my left eye, which would have an immeasurably huge impact on my life.
Thank you all for taking the time to read this, and to all of my friends and family, please reach out to me if you have any questions about the surgery/treatment.
All my love and gratitude,
Grace