Grace Fetterman, the eight-year-old daughter of Pennsylvania’s second lady Gisele Barreto Fetterman and vice governor John Fetterman, was diagnosed with Coats disease after her mother noticed something unusual about her daughter’s eyes when looking through some family photos.
In each photo of her three young children she noticed something odd. “I saw a consistency; red eyes in both my boys but in Grace, I noticed one red eye and one yellow eye,” Fetterman told 27News. She consulted a local doctor who advised her to pull her daughter out of school and come in for a check-up immediately.
Grace was diagnosed with Coats’ disease, which occurs when blood vessels in the retina develop abnormally. Symptoms, usually in just one eye, typically begin in childhood and include a consistent white or opaque spot in the pupil. In Grace’s case, the condition was caught early enough that she was able to save her eyesight by wearing glasses for a few years.
Given their experience, both Fetterman’s urged parents to learn more about the issue and take a closer look at their children’s pictures, tweeting links to the https://knowtheglow.org/, which educates families about glow-related eye disorders.
No stranger to campaigning for causes, the popular Brazilian-born Gisele Fetterman lived invisibly as an undocumented immigrant in the US for a decade. Today she is a passionate advocate for women, the LGBTQ community, the arts and anyone living in the margins of society. “It’s a great honour to have a voice,” she told PennLive.
