Michael Owen heartbreakingly admits he prays every single night for cure for rare disease that has blinded his son James
MICHAEL OWEN heartbreakingly revealed he prays every day for a cure to his son James’ blindness.
James Owen, 17, was diagnosed with Stargardt disease, a rare disorder that usually causes loss of vision during childhood, when he was eight.
He was born with the condition which causes blind spots and blurred vision.
Owen spoke emotionally about raising James while he was unaware he suffered from Stargardht disease.
The former England striker said on Good Morning Britain: “I could not understand why he was not looking at the camera straight.
“I’d get people coming up to me saying ‘just a bit of advice for your son, when he shakes your hand, tell him to look in someone’s eye’ and things like that – I’d always think to myself ‘shall I tell him? No I’ll just leave it’.
“I was back in the day [think it was James’ fault], especially on the football field where I knew where he should have been standing and what he should have been doing and he was not doing it.
“I’m not a pushy parent and wouldn’t shout at him so I would make these whistling noises and he would know there was something wrong then.”
Owen and his son are set to feature in a new documentary titled Football is for Everyone, which will air on TNT Sports on January 30.
The programme will examine James’ life as a clinically blind teenager and take a behind-the-scenes look at the England Partially Sighted Futsal Team.
What is Stargardt disease?
Stargardt disease is a rare, inherited eye condition caused by fatty material building up on the macula — the small part of the retina needed for sharp, central vision.
The gene involved, ABCA4, helps process the breakdown of vitamin A inside the eye. If the gene is faulty, toxic byproducts of vitamin A build up in the light-sensitive cells in the eye, which then corrode and die.
It usually causes vision loss in childhood and adolescence and symptoms can include sensitivity to light, grey, black,or hazy spots in the centre of vision, and colour blindness.
It affects one in 10,000 people and there is no treatment or cure for the disease.
Owen spoke about how difficult it was for him to deal with as a parent, suggesting he wanted to take James’ pain away and would pray for a cure.
He added: “I suppose as a parent, myself and my wife probably felt far worse than James, which sounds really bad.
“You want to take all the pain away from him, you feel sorry for him every time he goes to hospital and gets new drops that make his eyes sting and he’s crying all day.
“As a parent, myself and my life probably felt much worse than James, you want to take all the pain away from him, but James was born that way, he doesn’t know any different.
“I think it was quite hard for us when we found out that this was an incurable disease at the moment.
“We live in an age with stem cells that we go to bed every night praying something will be there to cure him, but at the moment, it’s a condition that regresses over time.”