THE OLYMPIAN WHO IS BRINGING AWARENESS TO GLASSES
If you’ve watched the olympics at all over the past week, you’ve probably seen Stephen Nedoroscik or at least heard of him. Just a hint, he’s the one in the glasses! And he’s now (spoiler alert!) a two-time bronze medalist for his work on the pommel horse in the men’s gymnastic team event and individual event. Remarkable all on it’s own, but when you throw in his eye conditions, it truly is amazing! Stephen came out on social media spotlighting his conditions. One you may know, but the other is a little more rare. We wanted to spotlight a little more information about his conditions in case anyone was curious as they heard about them recently.
Strabismus
Strabismus is our fancy term for crossed eyes. The eye can cross in or out and can even alternate between which eye is crossing at one time. Check out the video below where Stephen shows his alternating esotropia (meaning one eye will be pointing in at any given time). Looking at his glasses, we suspect that he has prism in his glasses in order to keep his eyes more aligned when wearing the glasses. This is likely the reason Stephen prefers glasses to contacts to ensure his eyes are more in line and seeing their best. When we use contacts, we are not able to put prism into contacts and have no way of aligning the eyes better, like we can in your glasses. Dr. K, along with about 2-15% of the population, was born with this condition as well! She wrote a blog about her story here if you’d like to read more about it.
Check out this video where Stephen puts his strabismus on display!
Example of an iris coloboma making the pupil misshapen and larger in size.
Coloboma
The lesser known of his conditions is called a coloboma. Basically this means that a part of the eye is missing from birth. Only about 1 in every 10,000 patients will have a coloboma, but that can be a missing piece of tissue from any part of the eye. We’ve seen some patients with defects on the retina and eyelid more commonly with no visual disturbances. However, like Stephen’s coloboma, when it is affecting a structural part of the eye, in his instance the iris, it can cause significant impacts on vision and function of life. His iris coloboma is causing his eye to be constantly dilated, meaning his pupil is always very large and will not constrict in bright light making him extremely light sensitive.
We are so grateful to Stephen Nedoroscik for not only his contributions to Team USA in the Olympics, but also for bringing awareness to some lesser known eye conditions and the benefits of glasses! Go check out his instagram for more of what he is doing @stephen_nedoroscik. Glasses can be amazing not only for vision benefits, but to help with eye alignment, sun protection in light sensitive patients, and protection from elements to keep what vision and function we have intact. We believe like the media has been proclaiming, that “some superheroes really do wear glasses!”
