Medical Student Shows How Vision Is Affected By Different Medical Conditions Through A Series Of Photographs And It's Truly Eye-Opening

These photos did a great job showing just how challenging it is to live with these conditions

Chelsi

• Published in Interesting
• March 1, 2022

Science, technology, and medicine sure have gone a long way since the ancient time of Hippocrates. We no longer operate on people using unsafe tools and hope for the best.

Thanks to the advancements in modern science, the human race has eradicated some viruses that have plagued and decimated our population not too many years ago. Human life expectancy has also increased because of modern medicine.

In the 1920s in the US, the average life expectancy for men was 53.6 years old while women used to live to the ripe old age of 54.6 years old. Currently, the life expectancy in the US is 78.93 years; an impressive increase!

Despite all the knowledge and resources on our hands, we are still unaware of some medical conditions that a number of our population have to live with every single day. It also doesn't help that most of our public spaces are designed and catered for able-bodied persons.

No matter how many episodes of Grey's Anatomy you've seen, it's simply not enough to educate you about what it's really like to have these conditions. However, one TikTok video aims to open our eyes to the realities of these.

A Ghana-based medical student named Kelvin Fiagbe put in a lot of effort aiming to show how certain medical conditions can affect a person's vision. The viral TikTok video has captured the attention of more than 400k internet users and hopefully, it raises awareness and encourages empathy.

1. Migraine with aura is also known as classic migraine - the studies about what exactly causes these auras are still ongoing

2. Dyslexia is a common learning difficulty that affects reading, writing, and spelling

3. Eye floaters are typically caused by aging; microscopic fibers in the eye clump together and cast shadows in the person's retina

4. Deuteranopia or green-blind is a type of color blindness where a person does not have the ability to perceive red-green wavelength of colors

5. Tritanopia is also known as blue-yellow color blindness

Another example of Tritanopia

6. Protanopia is red blindness where a person does not have red cones and they see more green than red

7. Achromatopsia is total color blindness where lacks the ability to perceive any color

8. Blindness refers to loss of vision that cannot be corrected with lenses or glasses

9. A person is considered legally blind if their vision cannot be improved beyond 20/200 even with the help of eyeglasses

10. Myopia is a visual condition wherein a person can see objects that are near clearly while far

11. Astigmatism is a condition where the cornea of your eye is not perfectly round causing blurry vision from all distances

12. Hyperopia is seeing distant objects crystal clear but closer objects are blurry

13. Glaucoma is a group of eye condition that damages the optic nerve. It is one of the leading causes of blindness for people 60 years old and above

14. Nystagmus is the involuntary ryhtmic movement of the eyes; side to side, up and down, or circular motion

15. Diabetic Retinopathy is a complication caused by diabetes; it's the damage to the blood vessels of light sensitive tissues at the back of the eyes

16. Visual Snow is a neurological disorder that causes a continuous visual disturbance that is described as flickering dots similar to noise from analog TVs

A manifestation of visual snow under different conditions and environments

17. Diplopia or double vision is seeing two pictures of the same thing and it can affect one or both eyes

18. Synesthesia is experiencing one of your senses through another. For example: hearing music but seeing shapes, hearing a word and immediately see color

19. Prosopagnosia or face blindness is the inability to recognize of differentiate faces

20. Cataracts is the clouding of the normally clear lens of the eyes; it's as if you're looking through a frosted or fogged up window

If you've never had any of these medical conditions, it's easy to take seeing for granted. The photos above did a really great visualization of what it's like to live with these visual impairments.

It also brings to light that there is much left to be done on making public spaces more accessible for people who have difficulty seeing things. This is definitely a step in the right direction and we have the video created by Kelvin Fiagbe to thank.

Chelsi