When you are first diagnosed with any medical condition, it comes as a shock, it is worrying, and it provokes the inevitable anxiety caused by anything that rocks your life. When the medical condition is a rare one like birdshot, which is sometimes hard to diagnose and can be even harder to treat, then you need all the help you can get.
The Birdshot Survival Guide was compiled by birdshot patient Fiona Gee using input from many fellow birdshotters (as we call ourselves) and reviewed by medical professionals.
The Guide was first published in UK, but now there is also a special edition of the Birdshot Survival Guide for birdshotters who live in the US. BUS members Patricia Clarke and Leanne Oswald collaborated to produce the US version of the Guide.
The purpose of the Guides is to share handy tips that other birdshot patients have discovered on their birdshot journey. The hope is that the Guides will help you to survive the many challenges of being a birdshotter.
You may like to print off copies of the last few pages of the Guides. You can keep these with your notes about your eye clinic appointments so that you have useful numbers and other information ready to hand.
If you want to download a PDF copy of either of the Guides, you can do this from the links below.
- Birdshot Survival Guide UK version, published in October 2018.
- Birdshot Survival Guide US version, updated January 2023.
We also have the UK version available as a booklet which we can post out to you. Please contact us to request this.
Give us your feedback
Please tell us what you think of our Survival Guides so we can keep improving them. Click the link to fill in our feedback form. Also please do let us know of your own handy tips to help with coping.
Revised January 2023