We are from Bulgaria, and our daughter is Prof.Ahmet’s patient since 2018. At that time Svetlozara (Zara in short) was wearing normal glasses, and was with unknown diagnose. We are following her condition since she was a baby, yet none of our doctors spoke of a diagnose, we only followed the symptoms. She has pretty low vision (20/200 with normal glasses), strabismus, nystagmus, severe light sensitivity. We travelled to Istanbul to meet Prof.Ahmet and order the mini telescopic glasses. I’ll never forget how I asked him about a diagnose and he wrote it on a piece of paper (I still keep it). It was in January 2020, almost 3 years after that day – and the same diagnose was confirmed via gene analysis. Zara has achromatopsia (gene PDE6C), a form of cone dystrophy.
Today? She’s visiting a regular school, she’s doing great with the mini-telescopic glasses. She can see the board at school, and her vision is 20/50, even 20/40 – and it was a great surprise also to our opthamologist in Bulgaria. What’s that great about these spectacles is the fact that Zara can do absolutely everything – play, run, read, watch TV (she was not watching television before, because she simply didn’t see it properly), she even plays PlayStation! Can you imagine that she can see details in the game that even I, who am totally fine with my vision, cannot always see? Those glasses and the communication with Prof.Temel bring so much rest to my troubled mother’s mind. I’ll never also forget the day the glasses arrived at home, she put them on and even without any training she was able to see car registration plates from the other part of the road – I cried that day, but with sweet tears of happiness.
We, as Zara’s parents will never be able to thank Prof.Ahmet enough! Because he has created something that is giving people with low vision a new chance in life. God bless you!
