A woman from Seattle lost her vision after performing a string of cartwheels with friends.
Deborah Cobb, now 42, was just 19 when the frightening ordeal began during a summer outing in 2002.
Challenging herself for fun, Cobb decided to see how many cartwheels she could do in a row - reaching 13 before collapsing with dizziness.
“I decided to see how many cartwheels I could do in a row just for fun,” she told Newsweek. “So I started doing them and got to 13 and fell over super dizzy. My eyes were kind of spinning so it took a moment to realize that my eyes weren’t focusing.”
At first, she dismissed the disorientation as temporary. But when she looked at her friend’s face and saw only “a giant orange blur,” she knew something was wrong.
“There was no pain, and my peripheral vision was fine, but everything I looked directly at was blocked by an orange blur,” Cobb said. “I was panicking inside, but not outwardly so my friends didn’t think anything of it.”
By the next morning, Cobb’s vision had not returned. She headed to the hospital, where doctors initially suggested she may have “sunburned” her retinas.
But a retinal specialist soon diagnosed her with hemorrhaging in both maculas - a rare and serious condition, particularly in someone so young.
“My central vision was completely gone... I couldn’t drive, I couldn’t read, I couldn’t see myself in the mirror... which meant I couldn’t put on makeup... I couldn’t even watch TV,” Cobb said.
“It was the first time it fully hit me how limited I was and how dependent I was on other people for simple things like reading, which I had completely taken for granted,” she added. “I started sobbing.”
Dr. Rajesh C. Rao, an ophthalmologist who specializes in retinal surgery, explained that the condition is highly uncommon in healthy young people.
“The head being upside down abruptly or repeatedly can also increase pressure in veins in the retina, and some at-risk individuals can be prone to macular hemorrhage,” he told Newsweek.
After three months, Cobb’s vision gradually returned - but not without lasting effects. Even two decades later, she continues to experience light flashes and dark floaters caused by retinal jelly detachment.
“The only option is surgery,” she said. “But surgery almost always causes cataracts, which would only mean another surgery. So I’m okay to just live with it.”
Today, Cobb works as an integrative health practitioner and nervous system regulation coach, and says the experience gave her a renewed perspective on life.
“We so often focus on what’s going wrong in our lives that we miss all of the things that are going right,” she said. “There are so many simple gifts that could be bringing us joy every day, if we just learned to appreciate them. That’s what this experience taught me: never stop being grateful.”