It All Blends In

About eight or nine months ago I found out that I am colour-blind and although it did come as a bit of a shock it finally explained why I have always seen colour differently to other people. For example, I am fairly sure that every pencil in this tin are different colours because what would be the point (haha pun) in selling a tin with multiple pencils of the same colour. If you look at this you can see which ones look the same to me - those with sharp points because they've never really been used.

When I was diagnosed the optician couldn't believe that I have got this far in life without ever being diagnosed before. I think it's fairly obvious why I haven't. First of all I'm female and colour-blindness is rare in girls. Secondly my main deficit is blue/green and standard tests only look for the more typical (male) red/green. Colour perception is linked to chromosomes, red/green comes from an altered X chromosome, therefore because males only have one X there is a higher chance of the alteration being present as both X's would have to be altered for a girl to have red/green deficit. The blue gene is chromosome 7.

That's the biology lecture over!

I've always struggled with colours, I've never completed a jigsaw and I cannot follow a map made up of different coloured lines because inevitably a few lines will look the same to me. I have found ways of adapting - hence how long it's taken to figure all this out. People sometimes ask if it bothers me but in all honesty most of the time I don't really think about it, also a number of people say to me "what colour is that grass" well, grass is green because I know it is and the sky is blue because I know that too...a better wind-up would be to give me a London Underground map and tell me to find my way from A-B while looking at it.

Don't get any ideas......!