That's flipped things on their head a bit. o______o At least I'm not panicking right now, but I am currently waiting for myself to start panicking. In fact, I don't think I'm going to panic now, especially since nothing is confirmed, so that's all good. However, I'm going to tell you all about it now before I find out for certain either way, because I have a feeling that I will be a lot more of a mess if I find out for certain that it is true.

I'm assuming all of you know of my partial deafness. That's nothing unusual, although it's not often that you meet someone genetically deaf. Some of you will also know that my night vision is absolutely terrible, especially people who know me IRL - seriously XD Some of you may even know of my awful periphial vision ( if I spelt that right ; ). But, something I wasn't aware of is that these are all symptoms of something called 'Usher Syndrome'. The wiki is here - [link] - but it may be better for me to explain it myself from what I heard from Mum, who came in to tell me about it.

My brother has recently been in to get his eyes checked, because he has this blob on his vision (they think that's to do with something completely different to Usher's Syndrome though). However, while this was going on, somehow the possibility of this syndrome was raised. The symptoms I mentioned above, and me and my brother, who is also deaf, show all of those as far as I know. What this means is, if it transpires we do have Usher's Syndrome, we are both going to go blind. It won't be complete blindness, and nor will it be an instant thing. I don't know when it's going to start - I may begin to lose my sight in my 20s, or I might lose it in my 50s, or anywhere in between or before or after. However, I should retain some of my vision - maybe around 5%.

The main reason I'm telling you all about this now is NOT because I want any of my friends to worry. o____o;;;;;; It's because right now, I'm fairly light-hearted about it, and it's not confirmed, so we might be wrong. We're going to get it checked out next Tuesday. This means that when telling you all about it, I can manage not to sound all shocked as if I think my life is going to end! If we're diagnosed and it turns out we have it, then I probably won't be quite so okay about it. I don't really want to have to explain it then, and nor do I want to keep it inside of me and feel like I'm killing myself. SO, all of you, that's why I'm telling you now, but don't worry about me. XD Right now I am perfectly happy, and whichever way I hopefully have many years of sight ahead of me. You might just need to remind me of that once or twice, if it turns out I have it. And if any of you dare comment with sympathy, I might have to pounce on you and eat you D< If you're going to worry about anyone if I go blind, worry about the people who are going to end up being hit by my white stick. ... Seriously... My main concern with putting this up is upsetting people, so note that I am not, at present, all that worried by this, despite the fact that it is a real possibility. In future, I probably will be, but if I can live with deafness, I can live with blindness. XD Just remember, Usher Syndrome is NOT fatal, and I am NOT going to vanish off the face of the earth because of it.