Being blind won't stop me LIVING MY DREAM

When Sassy Wyatt lost her sight, she vowed to have a whole world of adventures

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I always hoped I’d travel the world and experience places I’d only ever seen in photos. But when I was told I was going blind at just 14 years old, I assumed that dream was over. It only goes to show how wrong you can be.

As a young child, I loved climbing trees and running around with my friends, but at the age of seven I broke my arm after falling off a swing. Although my arm healed easily, my knee swelled up. Doctors were baffled as the swelling spread across my whole body, and it took over a year of tests to discover I had arthritis.

It was a shocking diagnosis for someone so young, but I took the medication I was given and got on with things. As the months wore on, the pain in my joints got worse, until it became so bad that I needed to use a wheelchair.

New challenges

No nine-year-old girl wants to be different, but Mum and Dad never let my wheelchair stop us from doing anything. Holidays to the seaside with me in a wheelchair and my younger sister, Jordan, in a buggy were challenging, but they made it work.

By the time I started high school at 11, new medication meant that I needed my wheelchair much less. My best friend, Emily, found it hilarious to whizz up and down the corridor in it, making us laugh until we cried, and I loved the freedom of being able to go out with my friends.

But then, when I was 14, things changed for me once more. My parents and I had previously been told that my arthritis could affect my eyesight, but I hadn’t worried about it. What young girl would? Only, in 2005, we were on holiday in Scotland when my eyes started stinging. I assumed I was allergic to my gran’s dog and was given eye drops. But over the next few days my vision grew blurry, and when we got home Mum made me an appointment at the eye hospital.