Michael Owen has admitted that he “goes to bed every night praying” for a cure to his son’s rare condition that left him blind.
The former England footballer appeared on Good Morning Britain today alongside his son James to discuss his incurable genetic condition.
James was diagnosed with Stargardt disease at the age of eight and his sight has gotten progressively worse since then and he is now “clinically blind.”
Speaking to the hosts on GMB, the father-of-four said: “I suppose as a parent, myself and my wife probably felt far worse than James, which sounds really bad.”
“You want to take all the pain away from him, you feel sorry for him every time he goes to hospital and gets new drops that make his eyes sting and he’s crying all day,”
“As a parent, myself and my wife probably felt much worse than James, you want to take all the pain away from him, but James was born that way, he doesn’t know any different.”
The former footballer continued: “I think it was quite hard for us when we found out that this was an incurable disease at the moment.”
“We live in an age with stem cells so we go to bed every night praying something will be there to cure him, but at the moment, it’s a condition that regresses over time.”
“It’s water off a duck’s back to us, it’s just news to the world, but we’ve been living it for a long time.”
Making light of the situation, the father joked: “We just try to look at the positives. I’m a taxi driver for life and I am delighted about that. It keeps us close.”
The 17-year-old also added that he doesn’t let his situation get him down as he “doesn’t know any different.”
James revealed: “I didn’t know any different because it’s always been that way for me. I’ve always seen like that, apparently I have some bind spots and its blurry in some areas. But I don’t know any different.”
