A young blind woman who regained her sight has given the phrase ‘love at first sight’ a whole new meaning after seeing her future husband for the first time.
Sophia Corah lost her eyesight incredibly quickly when she was just 18 years old, waking up with poor vision one day in March 2017 and being declared legally blind just three months later.
She was later diagnosed with keratoconus - a condition which causes the cornea to lose its round shape.
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“It was terrifying suddenly waking up unable to see and I became very dependent on others to help me. At first I thought it was an allergy attack or something,” Sophia said.
“I drove to school and realised my eyesight was going when I couldn’t read the paper.”
Sophia later said she cried for six months after learning the truth about her condition, terrified she would never be able to see the faces of her future children, but nonetheless was determined not to let her disability take over her life.
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Shortly afterwards, Sophia moved to Colorado to study psychology at university, which is where she met future husband Christian Corah, now 25, and immediately felt a connection.
The two became fast friends, and as her condition started to worsen Christian quickly stepped up to support her.
After researching the disease Christian discovered it could be cured through surgery, and after organising a fundraiser for Sophia, managed to raise over $19,000 (£16.5k) in just over five weeks to help her pay for her treatment.
In October 2018, Sophia had the surgery, but the road to recovery was a long one.
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“My vision slowly started coming back, but it was very gradual while I healed,” she said.
“I was able to start wearing … [scleral] contacts, which meant I could see, but it was very intense, and I could only wear them for a few hours at first.”
It took Sophia ten months to regain 20/20 vision, and she stayed in touch with Christian the entire time.
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Upon regaining her sight, she quickly realised that nobody else made her feel the same way he did.
“I decided to travel to see him after I had built up the courage to tell him how I felt,” she explained.
“I couldn’t see what Christian looked like when I met him– with keratoconus my vision meant I could see about 10 eyes all over the place so I couldn’t really piece him together.”
But the first time she laid eyes on him, she couldn’t believe how handsome he was.
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She said: “I knew I’d fallen for him and had to tell him how I felt. Luckily he felt the same way.
“I had already built a connection with him that it didn’t matter what he looked like, but it was very nice to properly see his face after all this time.
"He was even more handsome than I could have imagined.”
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Luckily, Christian, who works as a data analyst, felt the same way, and the two started dating and got married in June 2021.
“Christian was there for me in the toughest times of my life and supported me and made me feel so special. It brought us so close together," Sophia says.
‘It’s been an amazing journey.”
Tom Sanders