The 21-year-old Wu, an accountant by profession, admitted that she was addicted to the game.
On a free day, she would have sessions as long as 8 hours without eating, drinking, or even going to the toilet. On October 1, the incident happened when she was playing the game after the dinner.
“If I don’t work, I usually get up around 6am, have breakfast, then play until 4pm,” she told The Global Times.
“I would eat something, take a nap, wake up and continue playing until 1 or 2am. My parents had warned me that I might go blind.”
After her sudden loss of sight in the right eye, she was taken to several hospitals and later diagnosed with Retinal Artery Occlusion (RAO).
RAO is a medical condition where a blockage occurs in one of the arteries that carry blood to the retina. RAO mostly occurs in the case of elderly people and might lead to permanent loss of sight.
While a specialist from the hospital blamed “excessive” viewing of the screen as the likely cause of RAO, Dr. David Allamby thinned the possibilities.
“You don’t get RAO from video-related severe eye strain as is suggested here — it’s most commonly evidence of some form of cardiovascular disease,” he told Daily Mail. “The only potential link — and it’s slim — is that sometimes migraines can be a rare cause of RAO.”
Addiction to smartphones and computers is a common and concerning issue these days. It’s advised that you should restrict your usage and take other necessary precautions.