It happened in January this year. Back then, as a new mum to a one-year-old and fast approaching my 30th birthday, I felt invincible, immortal even, like I was going to live forever.

And that fateful Saturday started ordinarily enough. My husband and I were making our fortnightly Queensway Shopping Centre run with our toddler to eat my favourite muah chee (glutinous rice balls with ground peanuts) and to make our yearly pair of new spectacles.

At our regular optical shop, I selected a retro-looking Thom Browne frame and at the examination room, the optician placed the good ol’ pair of gangly trial frames on me to test my vision. My left eye passed the test with flying colours, but my right eye hit it out of the park. With my left eye covered, all my right eye could see were shapeless blobs on the eye chart. I could not even read the biggest alphabet on it.

We were mystified. Looking worried, the optician advised me to get my eyes checked as soon as possible.

My husband and I spent the weekend googling conditions and symptoms and eye doctors. Was it retina detachment? Had I sustained a mysterious eye injury?

Not once did it cross my mind I could be going blind at 30.

On Monday afternoon, I consulted an eye doctor I had been referred to. After a battery of tests, he diagnosed me with juvenile primary open-angle glaucoma, a rare and aggressive subset of the incurable eye disease which is the leading cause of irreversible blindness globally.

Both my eyes have glaucoma, but my right one is the worst hit, with much of my central vision already diminished.

(The only reason I had not found out earlier was because my better left eye had been faithfully compensating for any vision my right lost. In the haze of new motherhood, I had also been attributing any blurriness in my vision to lack of sleep or a need for new glasses.)

The aftermath

Our world imploded. There had to be a mistake. Wasn’t I was the least likely candidate for the disease? I was so young, and apart from high eye pressure (mine was 33; the normal average is 18), I fulfil none of the risk factors (age over 60, family history of glaucoma, diabetes, high blood pressure, etc).

Refusing to believe the diagnosis, we sought a second, and then a third opinion, but the results came back the same, clear as day.

My husband broke down in the car but I remained stone-faced, grappling with a deluge of questions. Why me? What had I done to deserve this?

What truly broke me was going home to my baby, looking at him through my right eye and seeing his beautiful, cherubic face obscured in smudges of grey, like I had been staring at the sun for far too long.

Something within me died. I felt consumed by fear and haunted by the spectre of the disease. The uncertainty of it all was a shroud that enveloped me, even as my doctor did his utmost to lower my eye pressure and arrest the deterioration of my eyesight.

By March, I was on all four classes of glaucoma meds and had had a minimally invasive Selective Laser Trabeculoplasty (SLT) done on my right eye to reach the ideal pressure of 13.

Life updates

Just two months later in May however, the universe decided to throw a spanner in the works, and I developed an allergy to one class of meds. My doctor switched me to a new eye drop but it has proven not as effective, and my eye pressure has climbed to 17. If it does not drop to 15, I’ll have to undergo surgery — a procedure considered high risk for young patients like me.

In June, I quit my job. It feels strange and scary to be unmoored from the rat race of life, but if being struck with glaucoma has had any silver lining, it’s made me clearer on my priorities. I want to spend as much time as I can with my young son, to be there for him the moment his bright eyes open in the morning, give him as many hugs as I can throughout the day, and bring him out to see the world while I still can.

I want to spend some time to figure out how to live my best life under the glare of glaucoma.

I don’t know what tomorrow brings, but hope springs eternal. And most of all, the love, from my family and friends keeps me going strong even in my darkest, most despondent moments.