A 12-year-old boy has been diagnosed with a rare eye disease which will rob him of his sight – after his vision was so bad an optician thought he was faking symptoms to get glasses.
Schoolboy Farron Lunn started complaining about his eyesight more than a year ago and was taken to the optician for tests.
But the youngsters results were so bad that the optician thought he was pretending in the hope of getting glasses and asked his father, Steve, to bring him back in six months.
A second optician referred Farron to Hull Eye Hospital, East Yorks., where tests confirmed he has Stargardt disease.
The rare condition, which only affects one in 100,000 people, will rob Farron of his central vision and leave him with only his peripheral vision.
Dad Steve, 39, said: “I was absolutely devastated for him. He’ll never drive, ride a motorbike and his job prospects will be severely limited.
“I took it worse than he did because he’s just carrying on with his life.”
“If he had been sitting in a corner quiet, that’s when I would have been worried.”
Steve’s wife Helen, 34, died in 2010 after battling five separate brain tumours. Farron was just seven and his sister Bethany was ten.
Mrs Lunn raised thousands of pounds for charity before her death.
Mr Lunn, who owns the Ritz bar in east Hull, said it had been hard to keep going after his wife’s death but he had tried to remain strong for Farron and Bethany, now 16.
Mr Lunn, of Bilton, East Yorks., said: “We try to deal with it in the same way as we dealt with what was happening to Helen. It’s not great, in fact, it’s bloody awful, but at least he will still be able to see his children and grandchildren because he won’t be completely blind.
“We don’t know how long it is going to take and there is no glasses or treatment to help him, although there could be in the future. But, for the moment, he’s fine, he’s still going out to play with his friends.
“We’ve had a lot thrown at us but what can you do? You can’t crawl into a hole, you’ve just got to get on with it.”
The family are holding a charity fundraising night to raise cash for the Royal National Institute for the Blind.
The Stars In Their Eyes event will be held at The Ritz bar on Wednesday 23 September.
Tickets cost £3. People can collect them in advance from The Ritz or can call Linda on 07745 130009 to reserve them.
