NO TIME FOR PITY : Capistrano Valley Athlete Wants No Special Treatment Despite Rare Eye Disease
In the eyes of Laurinda Mulhaupt, there lies an indelible strength. One that has been tested and tempered by an obstacle most will never know. And never fully understand.
The obstacle is Stargardt’s disease, a rare juvenile retinal disorder that gradually leads to partial blindness. Mulhaupt, a junior at Capistrano Valley High School, learned she had the disease five years ago as an eighth-grader at Newhart Elementary School in Mission Viejo.
Since then, Mulhaupt’s vision has gone from 20/80 to 20/200 in both eyes, rendering her legally blind.
Until now, Mulhaupt and her family kept knowledge of the disease from all but her closest friends. Her teachers knew, but she never told most of her teammates. She didn’t want people to pity her.
“We just wanted people to take Laurinda for who she is,” said Rich Mulhaupt, her father.
What Mulhaupt is known for at Capistrano Valley is her tremendous athletic ability.
Although she cannot make out the facial features of persons standing more than seven feet away, Mulhaupt is a three-sport athlete. She plays varsity tennis and soccer and runs middle distance on the school’s track and field team.
She is, several eye specialists say, an exception in the world of the visually impaired. Stargardt’s disease affects the macula, the center point of the retina that allows for visual acuity. Though peripheral vision is spared, central vision--which allows for straight-on sight--is gradually diminished.
Doctors describe a Stargardt patient’s vision as blurred or entirely missing in the central area. Generally, it means victims have to rely on their peripheral vision for sight, and auditory cues for better overall orientation.
Patients say that to better understand their vision, sighted people should close one eye, then place a thumb approximately one inch away from the open eye.
“It’s extremely difficult to imagine a (Stargardt’s patient) playing tennis,” said Dr. James R. Brinkley, a clinical associate at USC’s Doheny Eye Institute and Mulhaupt’s ophthalmologist. “I think that’s incredible. Following a ball would be very difficult.”
But follow she does.
When she was 13, Mulhaupt was given a routine eye examination by a school nurse. Mulhaupt squinted at the eye chart but could make out only the big E on the top line. She had never had previous eye problems.
Mulhaupt saw several doctors and ophthalmologists and was finally referred to the Doheny Eye Institute. There, she and her parents met with more than 20 eye specialists before a final diagnosis was reached.
A doctor sat Mulhaupt in a chair behind his desk. He took three steps back and told her that soon she wouldn’t be able to clearly see his nose, mouth or eyes.
He was standing seven feet away.
Though she found it difficult to believe at the time, Mulhaupt said her vision is at that point now.
“When they told my family, my parents were real shook up,” Mulhaupt said. “To them, it was a disaster. But I was strong. I just wanted to go on.”
Mulhaupt said she first noticed a big change in her vision when she and her family took their annual ski trip to Lake Tahoe that winter.
She said the moguls--small bumps of hardened snow on ski slopes--were getting more difficult to see.
“Sometimes they sneak up on you,” she said, then quickly added: “Of course, that’s how it is for everyone.”
She began skiing behind her 19-year-old sister, Kristy, for guidance.
Mulhaupt says that because she developed most of her athletic skills at a young age--she started skiing and playing tennis at 5--it gave her a great advantage over those who try to begin such activities after their vision has already diminished.
“If you took an adult who suddenly lost their macula acuity, he would have a much harder time adapting,” said Dr. Marjorie A. Mosier, associate professor of ophthalmology at the UC Irvine Medical Center in Orange. “Her system at the time it happened was probably more plastic, and she would be able to adapt easier to the changes. Still . . .”
It’s difficult to imagine that Mulhaupt has any problem when you watch her dribbling a ball on the soccer field. Last Thursday, Mulhaupt made a perfect cross for the Cougars’ first goal against El Toro. When a goalie kicked a ball high toward Mulhaupt’s range, Mulhaupt readied herself for a header, cocked her head slightly to the right and passed it directly in line of a teammate.
“The only real problem I have in soccer is when the coach is telling us to move forward or back on the field,” Mulhaupt said. “He usually waves his arm (to direct the players forward or backward), but I can’t see that. I can only hear his voice, and hear when he says ‘OK. That’s far enough.’
“I can’t really see the ball if it’s way across the field. But if it’s moving, I can tell what it is and usually which way it’s going.”
Tennis, Mulhaupt said, is more difficult.
“Sometimes, they’ll hit a volley from the net and I run the other way,” she said. “But you deal with it. I can’t see the baseline on the (opponent’s) side. But I have good peripheral vision, so it’s not that big of a deal.”
As a freshman, Mulhaupt was the top singles player on the junior varsity, with a 37-0 record. In track and field, she won frosh/soph titles in the 400 and 800 meters and the 1,600-meter relay at the South Coast League championships.
Last year as a sophomore, Mulhaupt played varsity in all three sports. She was the South Coast League’s 800-meter champion with a best of 2 minutes 17.1 seconds.
This year, Mulhaupt and her best friend, Natalie Pierce, teamed as the Cougars’ No. 2 doubles team. She is the starting left wing on the soccer team, and is hoping to lower her 800-meter mark to 2:10 this spring.
“I think it’s wonderful she’s doing all this,” said Mara Jean Davis, a counselor at the Braille Institute of Orange County in Anaheim.
“She probably doesn’t look at it as, ‘This is going to stop me.’ She has a great inner strength and probably has never looked at blindness as a negative thing.”
Mulhaupt said repeatedly that having Stargardt’s “has never been that much of a problem to me.” In sports, she said, she can just try a little harder. In school, she uses magnifying viewers and large-print books for reading and, if she can’t see the blackboard well enough from her front-row seat, she borrows notes from friends.
But what she cannot do--drive--is something her parents say Mulhaupt, 17, has been looking forward to for a long time. Kristy Mulhaupt said one of her sister’s favorite pastimes is driving a golf cart at their grandparents’ home in Fallbrook.
“I think not being able to drive is one of the toughest things for her,” said Linda Mulhaupt, Laurinda’s mother. “People keep asking her, ‘Why haven’t you got your driver’s license yet?’ She just tells them she can’t, or doesn’t really answer. I think not being able to drive is very hard for her.”
Said Pierce, her friend: “Laurinda never really wants to talk about it, but she wrote me once that the worse thing for her with her eyes is that when she has children, she’ll never be able to drive them to school or anywhere.”
Still, Mulhaupt said, she knows it could be much worse.
“This story is going to be such a shock to everyone,” she said. “But the reason I haven’t told many people is I don’t want sympathy. I don’t want to be treated differently or be pitied. That’s the last thing I want.
“If this disease has done anything for me, it’s brought me closer to my family and given me the determination to accomplish my goals. I think it’s given me a strength I might not have had otherwise.”
