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What is THE Best Disease?

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I know, I know. That’s just wrong on two counts. This is a romance blog… and besides, how can any disease be THE best? They’re all THE worst!

But there actually is a disease by that title, and it called my name. You can look up Best Disease here if you want more details, but suffice to say that it is an incurable, uncorrectable, inherited retinal disease that causes loss of central vision and acuity.

I’ve worn glasses since I was three. My left eye was the lazy eye. My right eye was the good one. As life goes, Best Disease settled in my formerly good eye but didn’t affect my formerly lazy eye. If both had been equally affected, I’d be legally blind. As it is, there’s a distinct blob in the vision of my right eye, but my distance vision isn’t bad. I can drive (safely, I promise!) and manage most things just fine. I’m thankful for a 27” computer monitor and command+ to enlarge everything on it. I’m thankful for an ereader, as I can’t read paperbacks for pleasure. The font is too small and too faint.

Central field of vision for an eye affected by Best Disease!

So, why are we having this conversation today? Is it Feel-Sorry-for-Valerie Day?

Not at all! I did what any self-respecting author would do. I inflicted my personal challenges on a character, and you’re about to meet her!

Trinity Grant is a more typical Bestie than I am. The disease manifested in her mid-twenties (I was over 50, which is extremely atypical). And… while I gave it to her in only one eye, like mine, I gave it to her worse. She’s unable to drive. Otherwise, many of Trinity’s experiences, challenges, and outlook are mine.

Ah, Trinity.

I wrote a blog post shortly after my diagnosis. A question I asked there is this: “If you had a limited amount of time left to see, what would you want to fill your visual memory banks with?”

Trinity answers this question by joining the annual Pot of Gold Treasure Hunt. If she’s going to lose her vision, she wants her memory full of the beauty of God’s creation. She might be a slow hiker. She might need hiking poles to help keep from tripping over rocks and roots. She might actually be incapable of making out the numbers on her GPS handheld. But, by golly, she is going to see God’s majestic creation all around her if it’s the last thing she sees.

And that’s nearly what happens…

Widower Dale Kennedy is pushed to join the Pot of Gold Treasure Hunt against his better judgment. He doesn’t do ‘church events,’ but hiking the western Montana mountains seeking geocaches does sound fun. If only his group didn’t include an old man with a limp, a woman who won’t stop flirting, and Trinity Grant, a pretty potter who shouldn’t be turned loose without a white cane.

When Dale is injured in a rockslide and stranded with Trinity, he’s forced to reassess his assumptions about her abilities and his bitterness toward God. But how can he embrace the one thing he least expected and least wanted: love a second time around?
 

Love’s Treasure multi-author collection releases on Tuesday, June 15. If you would like to read Ruby Radiance (Trinity and Dale’s romance), please order Love’s Treasure today. This group of authors is working toward placement on the USA Today bestsellers list, and every pre-order counts. Besides, there are fourteen stories inside Love’s Treasure, all for one low price of 99¢!

If you haven’t already, you can pick up the first Pot of Gold Geocaching Romance, Topaz Treasure, for only 99¢. In it, you’ll meet Dale and his brother, Kirk, a year before Ruby Radiance begins.

Over to you. If you knew you had a limited amount of time left to see, what would you want to fill your visual memory banks with?

Valerie Comer (341 Posts)

Valerie Comer is a USA Today bestselling author and a two-time Word Award winner who writes where food meets faith and fiction. She injects experience laced with humor into her green clean romances. Her life on a small farm in western Canada provides the seed for stories of contemporary inspirational romance. Like many of her characters, Valerie and her family grow much of their own food and are active in the local foods movement as well as their church. She only hopes her creations enjoy their happily-ever-afters as much as she does hers, shared with her husband, adult kids, and adorable granddaughters.


Comments

  1. I would visit the most beautiful places in the world, while consuming as many films as possible and books not available in audio or braille.
    He would also start planning to found a publishing house with a supply of Christian and clean books in audio or braille. In fact it is something that I already want to do but offering traditional books too, I don’t know how but I would love it.

  2. I would want my visual memory jam-packed with my wife’s face: her smile, her look of open tenderness, her laughter – especially when caught by surprise by something funny. Yes, I would also want to stock up on nature’s beauty: sunrises and sets, spiderwebs laden with dew, backlit by a few rays of the rising sun, sparkling like diamonds, a new-mown front lawn (because I’ll never have to do it again!), the Rocky Mountains, Crater Lake, the night sky where it’s dark enough to see the Milky Way, the coast, mountains and waterfalls of Kauai from a helicopter, the Grand Canyon with huge birds soaring over the cliffs, the misty coast of Normandy, (you can skip the Alps; the Rockies will do just fine, thank you) and I would try to visit somewhere where the Northern Lights put on a show. I think I would also, as I visit each place, create a recording describing each place in my own words so that I can trigger the memories more fully.

    Already have my pre-order for the box set and all the extras downloaded. I’m really looking forward to it! Here’s to making best-seller!

  3. Nothing in particular as I would most likely forget it. Not Best disease for me in name or symptoms unfortunately. Though as I am getting older I do love Ctrl++++, it’s brilliant.

  4. OH, wow! I LOVED this book!! I read it as an ARC, like I did the whole set. I honestly don’t know what I’d want to store up most in my memory. Mom had age-related macular degeneration. She had no central vision in her left eye at all, and was losing a little more in her right eye before she passed. She could still see to make her cards and read, though! She couldn’t see to get around well, but she could still enjoy her crafts, though she was a bit slower doing them.

  5. Oh, Lilly, I totally LOVE your vision! And yes, I snickered a tiny bit as I typed ‘vision’ in today’s context. Either way (ahem) that sounds like a wonderful plan, and I hope you get the chance to pull it off!

  7. Oh yes to Control+ with however many +s are necessary! I’m so very thankful to have Best in a digital age when I can read on an ereader or enlarged screen!

  8. Macular degeneration affects SO many older people. I was amazed by how many there were in the retina clinics I’ve been to. It makes Best disease feel so manageable (but then I do not have worst case scenario there, either). Imagine going to university for eight years to be a medical doctor, then four more to be an ophthalmologist, then four MORE to be a retinologist. Even my brain is blurry thinking about that…

    Thanks for the ARC read! I’m glad you loved Ruby Radiance and all the others.

  9. I took Mom every 6 weeks at the beginning, then every 8 weeks for 9 years for her shots in her eyes. They didn’t work on the left one (misdiagnosed at the beginning) but they did manage keep her vision in her right eye. As bad as her left eye was, it was still helping her right eye! So thankful for the doctors!

  11. My husband, my children and my grandchildren and our pup Honeybear, all my siblings all together in a cabin in the mountains to take all of God’s beauty in. So many people and things we take for granted. Your book sounds like a very good read , Thank you for sharing about it , Congratulations on your new release. God Bless you and your family. Have a Great weekend and stay safe.

  15. I’d want to literally see as much as possible – people, places, vistas, colors……..

  16. I would love to have my family in my vision as well as nature. I have had glasses since I was sixteen months old. My left eye has very limited vision. My right eye has learned to overcome the loss of vision in the other eye. Thank you for sharing. God bless you.

  17. Eyesight is a wonderful thing and we tend to take it for granted. Mind you I’ve worn glasses for 30 years now, but am thankful for them!
    Re Ruby Radiance: people, I would buy Love’s Treasure for that story alone!! The other 11 stories are a bonus!

  21. Amazingly enough, you are the fourth author I know with only partial or no sight. This gives me hope even though right now I only have astgmatism and near-sightedness. My family has a history of macular degeneration. And it terrifies me.
    I think if I did lose my sight, I would want to see my family again before. Though I love sunsets and mountains and anything with water and rainbows and flowers and … ugh. God made everything so lively that it’s hard to pick one thing.

  27. I would want to store up sunsets, and sunrises. the view from the top of the mountains. Flowers and gardens.

  31. I would fill my vision with my husband as much as possible because I would mourn not being able to see my forever love! Then the rest of my immediate family & my seven year old grand-girl. I think I would miss seeing people I care about more than anything!

    I’d miss reading also, but there’s always audiobooks if the need was there. And my bible reading too, but I can listen to the Bible on CD or Christian podcasts or Bible study lessons online. I don’t watch much TV so I wouldn’t really miss that. I’d also miss driving, that would be hard to give up!

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