Diaz

It all started back in 2004, when my son Diaz was 4 years old. He was playing with his cousins at my sister’s house and my sister noticed that he was squinting. I didn’t think much about it and scheduled an appointment at the ophthalmologist the following week. During that week, he kept on squinting […]

Jessica

Hi, my name is Jessica. I’m 35 years old and I was diagnosed with Coats’ Disease when I was two years old. Originally, doctors thought I had a tumor behind my eye, but upon further evaluation they determined it was Coats’ Disease. I had to undergo surgery at the age of two to reattach my […]

Marah

Hello, my name is Marah. I am 21 years old from Bethlehem, Palestine. I was diagnosed with Coats’ Disease in my left eye when I was six years old. Luckily, it was only on Stage 2 so I was treated quickly to prevent any progression of the disease. As I remember, I was treated with […]

Kaydn’s Story

Kaydn was born six weeks early, in May of 2018. He spent his first nine days in the neonatal intensive care unit in Sioux Falls, SD. Despite being born premature, Kaydn left the hospital completely healthy and spent the first six months developing normally, just as a child would. This all changed on December 19th, […]

James

I am a single mother with two sons and we are from the beautiful island of the Philippines. My younger son, James, has Coats’ Disease. James is 8 years old and it was only August 2019 last year (a few days before his actual birthday on the 25th), that my son informed me that he […]

Ciolacu

Hello, my name is Ciolacu and I live in the Republic of Moldova. I am a violinist. When I was 13 years old, I was practicing the violin and I closed my left eye. I realized that I could not see with my right eye. The next day, I went with my mother to the […]

Blake

My fiancé, Blake, was diagnosed with Coats’ Disease at a very young age. This led to Blake having his right eye surgically removed in 2000, at the young age of just eight years old. Since that surgery, Blake has had multiple glass eyes, as he (and his eye socket) grew.  Today, Blake is 27 years […]

Ashley

In June of 2019, at 15 years old, Ashley was diagnosed with Coats’ Disease in her right eye by Dr. R. Sisk at the Cincinnati Eye Institute. Ashley has undergone four laser surgery procedures. After her last procedure in November 2019, her test showed she has lost the far peripheral vision on the nose side. […]

Braydan

My son, Braydan, is nine months old. When he was just four months old, our world came to a screeching halt. At two months old, our pediatrician referred us to PT for  what she thought was torticollis. After three sessions with the PT, she referred us to an ophthalmologist following a hunch that something “was […]

Mason

This is our bright, bubbly, energetic, funny, joyful, and handsome son, Mason. When he was four weeks old, we started to recognize something seemed a bit off. He was not meeting developmental bench marks appropriate for his age and did not respond to us the way one would think a new baby would respond to […]