Latest news with #DeborahCobb
New York Post
03-08-2025
- Health
- New York Post
I went blind after doing cartwheels — here's what I learned after losing my vision
A woman who lost her ability to see after a joyful romp on the beach is opening up about the frightening ordeal. Deborah Cobb was 19 years old when she broke out in a series of cartwheels — only to come up without her vision. Now 42, Cobb has said that she has the ocular health of an 80-year-old and anticipates she will soon return to blindness due to early-onset macular degeneration. Advertisement 4 Seemingly harmless horseplay caused temporary blindness and chronic illness for one 19-year-old woman. Mikhail Ulyannikov – In a new interview with Newsweek, Cobb said she was with her friends when she decided to challenge herself to do as many cartwheels in a row as she could 'just for fun.' '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,' she recalled. Advertisement 'Looking at her face, it was a giant orange blur,' Cobb continued, referring to a friend who witnessed the shocking moments. 'My eyes wouldn't fully focus. There was no pain, and my peripheral vision was fine, but everything I looked directly at was blocked by an orange blur.' Cobb's harrowing story went viral in a recent post on Instagram, where she detailed the mysterious medical phenomenon that doctors first thought was a sign of leukemia and even AIDS. 'I had neither. Just weak blood vessels in my eyes that is apparently a genetic trait as I later learned,' she wrote of her condition, called macular degeneration. 4 Deborah Cobb, now 42, shared details of her macular degeneration diagnosis on Instagram. deborahcobb_ihp/Instagram Advertisement Cobb explained in the viral video post that her gymnastic stunts had caused internal hemorrhages in a part of her eye called the macula, an area at the center of the retina that is responsible for sharp, focused vision. Macular degeneration is the leading cause of vision loss, affecting more than 200,000 Americans every year, usually brought on by old age and other factors, including genetics and cardiovascular disease. The condition causes blurred and distorted vision, dark spots changes in color perception. She was deemed 'legally blind' for three months after the initial incident, and did not regain full vision for another three months thereafter. 4 Macular degeneration, usually only seen in the elderly, affects the eye's ability to bring sight into sharp focus. mihai – Advertisement Cobb's life came to a halt during that time. As a result of the injury, she was forced to quit massage school. She couldn't drive, watch TV or even look at herself in the mirror. Though she was eventually able to return to school and later earned her license in massage therapy, she still lives in fear of losing her vision again. 'I can't do anything upside down or anything that causes too much blood to rush to my head. It happened once from doing push-ups, so I have to limit myself physically,' Cobb wrote. 4 Due to her eye condition, Cobb can no longer engage in physically exhaustive activities without risk of losing her vision again. deborahcobb_ihp/Instagram The experience inspired Cobb to dedicate her career to integrative medicine, and she now works with clients who suffer from anxiety and nervous system dysregulation. Cobb has also said that losing her vision gave her a positive new outlook on life, saying she's so thankful for the lessons in empathy and 'to not take the simple things for granted.' 'I could live in fear because of it, or I could be filled with gratitude because of it,' Cobb concluded in the thoughtful post. 'I choose gratitude, because who wants to live in fear?!'
Daily Mail
26-07-2025
- Health
- Daily Mail
Woman left BLIND after performing 13 cartwheels in a row
A fun day at the beach turned into a months-long medical ordeal for a Seattle teenager who went temporarily blind after doing cartwheels with friends. Deborah Cobb, now 42, was just 19 when she decided to see how many cartwheels she could perform in a row while having fun with her friends on a summer day in 2002. But after completing 13 consecutive cartwheels, the young woman fell over feeling 'super dizzy' and quickly realized something was terribly wrong with her eyesight. 'I decided to see how many cartwheels I could do in a row just for fun,' Cobb told Newsweek in a recent interview. '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 thought she was just dizzy but panic quickly ensued when she realized she could no longer see anything clearly. 'Looking at her [friend's] face, it was a giant orange blur. My eyes wouldn't fully focus,' she said. 'There was no pain, and my peripheral vision was fine, but everything I looked directly at was blocked by an orange blur.' Cobb first tried to play it cool and didn't immediately tell her friends how scared she was. 'I was panicking inside, but not outwardly so my friends didn't think anything of it,' she said. But her vision has not improved by morning. That's when she went to the hospital. '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,' she said. At the hospital, doctors initially thought she had simply 'sunburned' her retinas. But when she saw a retinal specialist, she got a far more serious and rare diagnosis. 'I had hemorrhaged in both of my maculas and it was going to take three to six months to fully heal,' she said. Experts say the condition is extremely unusual in someone so young. 'In healthy individuals, especially young people, this occurrence is quite rare,' Dr. Rajesh C. Rao, an ophthalmologist who specializes in surgery of the retina, told the outlet. '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.' Cobb said it took a while for reality to truly hit her. 'I started sobbing,' she told the outlet. 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.' While her vision did return after about three months, the bizarre injury still causes issues. Even decades later, Cobb still suffers flashes of light 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.' Despite the traumatic ordeal, Cobb remains grateful for all the joys in her life. 'We so often focus on what's going wrong in our lives, that we miss all of the things that are going right. '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.'
