When chef Nelize Pretorius felt her vision blurring — first one eye and then the other — it was initially brushed off as conjunctivitis.
But when the swab came back negative, her GP and hospital doctors struggled to understand what was making her eye inflammation progressively worse.
“I could hardly see,” she said.
“I was losing my vision and nobody was able to tell me why.”
The cause was nothing to do with the eye itself — instead it was due to a years-old tattoo on Ms Pretorius’s back.
The condition, known as tattoo-associated uveitis, can lead to permanent vision loss, glaucoma, and patients requiring immunosuppressants for the rest of their life.
“You get a tattoo, and you think the risk is that you might regret it later in life,” Ms Pretorius said.
“[The real risk is] you could potentially lose your vision.”
