Woman explains illness online

Tyfa Finlayson was 1 year old when she was diagnosed with juvenile idiopathic arthritis. The autoimmune disease causes her to go blind.

For four years, Taiva Finlayson from Ontario, Canada, couldn’t go outside or go about her daily life because of pain. The reason was something called juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA): an autoimmune disease that the Canadian woman was diagnosed with when she was just one year old. Due to a mismanaged immune system, her joints and skin initially become affected by chronic inflammation. The disease later spread to her eyes, leaving her blind on her right side at the age of 12. On the social media platform TikTok (@taivafinlayson), the young woman explains her condition and lets her followers share her story of suffering.

The immune system attacks the eyes: A young woman went blind and had her eyeball removed

“The infection had damaged the eye so badly that there was no stopping it,” Taifa Finlayson told the British news portal. Need to knowWith juvenile idiopathic arthritis, the joints of toddlers, children, and adolescents are usually initially inflamed. This is a relatively rare disease overall (about 4-5 children per 100,000). However, it is the most common chronic inflammatory rheumatic disease in children, affecting boys and girls equally. The causes of the autoimmune disease are not yet known. Immune predisposition as well as viral and bacterial infections are suspected as possible triggers.

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When Tavia Finlayson goes blind, her condition begins to deteriorate. If you've been blind for a long time, your eyes can shrink. “It's like grapes turning into raisins,” she explains. Need to knowThe TikToker then suffers from severe pain that greatly impacts her daily life and well-being. She compares the pain the young woman has to endure during this time as: “Like when you get a really bad scratch in your eye or when sand irritates your eye – except this happens every day, all day long, and in 2023 it will.” She was finally freed from the condition when doctors at St Joseph’s Hospital in London surgically removed her right eyeball.