A CORRIE Star was rushed to hospital after facing multiple episodes of vision loss.
Lisa George, best known for her role as Beth Tinker on the programme, has been battling a medical condition unknowingly for just shy of a decade.
Lisa was rushed to hospital in 2022 with sight loss[/caption]
She’s known for her role as Beth in Coronation Street[/caption]
This condition has now left her partially blind in one eye.
She also has no peripheral vision in her other eye.
Lisa, 52, received a diagnosis for the condition back in 2022 after her last episode took place, discovering that she had something known as NAION – non-arteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy.
It’s a condition punctuated by sudden bouts of painless vision loss, usually occurring in one eye at a time.
It results from an insufficient amount of oxygen reaching the eye’s optic nerves.
As more episodes occur, an increasing amount of damage can happen to a person’s eyes causing vision loss to varying degrees.
In some cases, it can even lead to blindness.
Lisa experienced her first bout of sight loss back in 2016, but it wasn’t until a recurrence in 2022 that she was rushed to hospital and found out she would be forever visually impaired.
“I was out for dinner for Katie McGlynn‘s birthday [a former Coronation Street star] and the restaurant was dark,” she said.
“I looked at the menu and it was all blurry.”
The next thing Lisa knew, she was calling up the doctors.
“I remember thinking, “Something is really wrong.”
“I phoned the opthamologist the next day and was sent to A&E and was back in hospital for a week.
“They told me it must’ve been my diabetes; I hadn’t been fully diagnosed with it yet.”
Lisa doesn’t talk much about her visual impairment but noted how the rest of the Corrie cast could have still guessed it due to the way her script looked.
“When I was on Coronation Street , the only reason many people knew was because my script was in font size 16 so they could probably see it from the other side of the set!
“I’m classed as “visually impaired” now on my Spotlight CV, and that did make me wonder if people maybe wouldn’t want to cast me.
“But there is better access now for people with all sorts of disabilities so I don’t let it worry me.”
Lisa’s character, Beth, abruptly left the Corrie cast back in 2024, and it was a heartbreaking set of final scenes for the alum to film.
In the story line, Beth was forced to flee Coronation Street after a showdown with her son Craig’s boss Kit Green.
She felt it was time to pursue other opportunities such as panto and music.
She also had raised concerns about her vision.
Lisa’s on-screen son Craig (Colson Smith) was axed from the programme back in May of this year after a tragic end.
He was brutally beaten to death.
She’s optimistic about what comes next in her career[/caption]
It has hard saying goodbye to Corrie after 13 years[/caption]
