For about 15 years, Rino Gattuso has had to deal with ocular myasthenia, an autoimmune disease that he was diagnosed with when he was 34 years old. Because of this problem, his career as a footballer ended a few years earlier than expected and his life habits changed radically: we have seen him on the bench several times with a bandage over his eye due to the disease, about which he has never made a secret, not even in post-match interviews. The “Festival dello Sport” in Trento has also touched on this topic, showing how he has been living with this problem for many years.
Gattuso talks about eye disease
In the long panel of "Gazzetta dello Sport", the Lazio coach has confessed in all aspects, without leaving aside the autoimmune disease that he discovered when he was 34 years old. He stopped playing football and there began his new sporting life, with a career as a coach that at that time represented a salvation: "Doing this profession has been somehow my destiny. I left football and immediately started coaching. I stopped playing even though I still had the opportunity, because at the age of 34 I was affected by an autoimmune disease, ocular myasthenia gravis". Gattuso has learned to live with his disease and keeps it under control through the use of cortisone. With his sincerity, he shared how he came to accept it: "I've been using cortisone for 15 years, because if I don't use it, I have diplopia, I can't see properly. Throughout all these years, I've always said that there are people with my disease who stay in bed for four or five months, unable to move. I've always thought: 'Imagine if they told me I had five months to live.'"
On several occasions Gattuso has appeared on the bench with a bandage over his eyes.
Ocular myasthenia has also forced him to change his lifestyle, especially due to the constant intake of cortisone, which requires some sacrifices: "I have accepted it, I work with it, I am stronger than the disease, but it costs me, because using cortisone every day is not easy: I have not drunk any alcoholic beverages for almost seven years, because you can't with cortisone, I have kept my mouth shut because someone else in my place would weigh 200 kg. We keep moving forward, because there is always worse, the important thing is to look forward as long as God gives us the strength to continue."
What is ocular myasthenia?
It is precisely the autoimmune disease that has made him appear on the bench several times with a bandage over his right eye. Myasthenia gravis was diagnosed at the age of 34: it is an autoimmune disease that affects the muscles of the eyelids and eye movements. According to studies, it appears due to a malfunction of the immune system, which produces antibodies that interfere with the transmission of muscle contraction. The most obvious sign is drooping eyelids, which also lead to deterioration of vision, a problem that Gattuso has also complained about. There is no specific cure, but the disease is treated with cortisone, which helps control the main symptoms, such as double vision: for this reason the coach takes it every day, to avoid possible deteriorations and continue living his daily life.
