Baby with limited vision in one eye

Hi I know it’s been quite a few months since this thread, but wanted to come and say my son, aged almost 4, was born with a coloboma a large one, in the back of the eye so he barley has any vision in the left eye but good vision in the right eye. It breaks my heart when I think of it, but reading all these stories really help. You wouldn’t know, he’s amazing and does everything any other child does, nursery , plays etc. we got told he will be able to drive etc. just not be able to be a pilot etc. hope your ok, it’s a horrible shock to hear, we only found out when he was just turned 3! It was awful. Can’t believe it was missed , but again you don’t know because he was born with it so he just doesn’t know any different. I suppose it’s better than loosing sight after having it and trying to learn. X

Are you monocular yourself? With the kindest of intent, your message isn’t helpful for the OP.

Whilst you may be technically ‘allowed’ to drive in the EU or the US if you are monocular and have a UK driving licence, I was v specific about my own lived experience of the impact of which eye is monocular.

If only your right eye has sight and you try to drive in either the US or the EU it is dangerous for the driver (and all the other road users) because you simply cannot see the most important peripheral areas relevant to the left hand side of you without turning your head completely. The practical effect of this is it takes your eye completely off the road in front of you.and you can no longer see the oncoming traffic or hazards like pedestrians or cyclists straight in front of you.

However you are technically correct - the DVLA doesn’t (can’t) bar me from driving in the US or EU but my ophthalmologist has done for safety reasons! Interestingly, I have a US colleague who has no sight in her right eye - the opposite side from me - and her US licence explicitly precludes her from driving in countries where you drive on the left, i.e. the UK. This is because it’s dangerous.

It is amazing how little sight the DVLA permit people to have to drive in the UK and my personal view is that it shouldn’t fall to ophthalmologists to recommend people don’t drive in certain countries. Hope this helps clarify my original post for you.

My bil has sod all vision in one eye and seems to be fine.

I'm about 70% blind in one eye and tbh it doesn't effect me at all. I live a perfectly normal life and am cleared to drive. It only really causes issues if I close the good eye, or sometimes if I'm looking at screens all day.

Definitely couldn’t tell, apart from when they chose to wear googles in sport a few children asked why. One child was more cautionary and wore glasses all day to give protection. Tbf he was adventurous and as his mother I may have made that choice!
We used to make adjustments to ensure that difficulties didn’t arise too, before issues happened. Small things like having the last peg on the row or the top drawer so they were easy to locate quickly in a rushed and busy environment. It’s great to ask for things like this, step painting, an extra adult for cycling proficiency etc, to prevent issues even if they aren’t needed. Small things but it can also simply reduce potential anxiety.

Oh yeah, I can't do that either. The old red and blue lens ones just look like I'm looking at something with annoying red and blue lines round it and the newer cinema ones just look weirdly fuzzy. Can't do Magic eye pictures either.

Can't say it's been majorly impactful on my life and certainly don't feel like I've missed out on anything.

Sorry, I've just remembered that there is one thing he can't do- see things with 3D glasses that's literally it.

My husband has a coloboma on his optic nerve in his right eye. He has only about 20% vision on that side, but you'd never know it unless he told you. He drives, played Rugby semi professionally in his teens and twenties and I've never known his eyesight to hold him back in any way.

I know it's hard and I'd feel the same if it was my baby, but honestly, it's not an issue in his life even a bit.

I’m blind in one eye. It hasn’t really effected my life at all!

It’s not quite a lazy eye as I think that’s muscular, I can’t remember the actual name of it but effectively the brain has switched off one eye due to a visual impairment. I think if something terrible happened to the good eye, there is a possibility the brain might use the bad one but it wouldn’t be good enough to drive with or anything.

One of the orthoptics doctors told me that no one actually uses both eyes simultaneously, but they flit between eyes in milliseconds and the brain processes it as one picture (binocular vision) but my family are monocular as they only use one eye.

Sometimes they can use patching to help young children strengthen vision in their weaker eye, it worked a bit for us but her brain still switches it off.

I have no vision in my right eye, I was born almost four months early and it's a side effect from an operation I had as a baby (the back of my eye is just a mass of scar tissue) I have full vision in my left eye and I'm 42 years old.
Unless you look really closely you can't see anything wrong with my, close up you can see a faint line running straight through the pupil.
It has had very little effect on my life because I've never known any different. I work full time, travel, read ect. I haven't ever tried driving and I do think it's down to confidence with sight. I have issues with depth perception and can be abit clumsy. It's not really an issue though, my husband drives and when he's not about I walk or take the train. I can understand why you're worried but your son will be fine.

My daughter and husband can only see out of one eye. They are both fine but obviously you have to be very careful with the functioning eye. They don’t have great depth perception but my 9 year old is fine in school etc and my husband is fine, works & drives etc. Hope this is reassuring x

Havent read the full thread by I have limited vision in my left eye and have had since birth. I do everything others do including drive. Have never had any issues at all.
Think your brain just makes up for the lack of vision in one eye. I don’t know any different and its never bothered me

Just for a bit more reassurance, one of the US Olympic gymnasts Stephen Nedoroscik has a coloboma and he got two medals at Paris!

No worries at all. No, they reckon glasses won’t do much to help his sight but he does wear a patch a couple of hours a day over his good eye and they’re hopeful that will improve his bad eye a little.
Haha yea that’s very true!!

My last little one (I foster) was completely blind in one eye, they can be slightly hesitant at first in new environments and sometimes prefer to wait for people to pass by when they are out walking etc. Sometimes they hesitate on play equipment when there are lots of other children moving about but you would never guess the reason for the hesitation, they have adapted really well and you would never tell by looking at them. The visual impairment team have gone into their new school to advise, the OT has an input too and while they lived with me we had good support from all the services. I was told there was no reason why the little one wouldn't be able to drive as an adult although certain careers would be closed to them (the armed services was one I think).

Hi OP, sorry to hear you are feeling so down, I know how you feel. Different diagnosis but same outcome here, my DS was born with congenital cataracts in his left eye. He had cataract surgery at 3 weeks old, many years of patching and he wears a bifocal in that lens of his glasses but he is still essentially blind in that eye. The vision in his right is 20/20 so like you, ‘with both eyes open’ he can see well.

Day to day it doesn’t affect him really. He excels at school, does swimming and football. The only thing that it will affect I think in the future is if he wants to go into the military say, or be a pilot. The main thing I worry about is something happening to his good eye, or his good eye deteriorating with age for example as our vision often does.

He is only 11 so this is a journey we are still navigating but up to now he has led an absolutely normal, happy life no different to any of his friends and there’s no reason the same can’t be said for your little one, though I understand how devastating it is. I had my second son last year and I can’t tell you how sick with worry I was waiting to find out if he would be born with the same condition or not (he wasn’t thankfully.) Feel free to message me if you ever need a chat.

@Sunflower1235 he wears glasses (his vision isn't great in his other eye either). As a child he wore a patch for a bit and he had corrective surgery that failed. But it's not had any impact on his adult life. Like I said, I often forget which eye is the bad one!

I almost didn't bother posting because there are lots of great stories on here already. My mother has what she usually refers to as a congenital cataract in her right eye; I don't know whether it is something that in more recent decades would have been operated on. Her family made very little of it - unfortunately she was given the message not to speak up about it at school for example, so didn't get acknowledge of the difficulties using binocular microscopes for example. She did play hockey and tennis fairly well - binocular vision provides a lot of depth perception for those of us who have it, but there are a lot of other clues the brain uses that still work if you only have one eye. She is still a good driver in her 80s. When we were children she did try to mostly avoid driving friends in the car with us though, she didn't want to be responsible for others.

She's always been grateful to the ophthalmologist who told her, age perhaps 7, to regularly close her "good" eye and work out what she could see with the other. For a long time that was mere shadows, but when she got older and the eye became more longsighted, she started to be able to make things out with peripheral vision in that eye. Since as an adult she's had various issues with her good eye, she is very grateful that she now has that small amount of useful vision in the bad one - it would be enough to get around, make out very large print and so on.