Face to face: Mother's life with facial blindness
When Tara Fall picks her daughters up from school, she recognises them not by the faces she sees every day, but only by the outfits she saw them in last.
“I take people in from the clothes they are wearing, their lipstick, jewellery, any other characteristics away from their actual face,” Fall said.
According to The Daily Mail, the stay-at-home mum suffers from prosopagnosia, a disorder that has since prevented her from recognising anyone’s face.
The woman from Iowa in the US has suffered the condition since she was 27. She had a surgical procedure to help cure her epilepsy however suffered a stroke and was diagnosed with prosopagnosia.
She's has been forced to devise a new way of recognising everyday faces in her life through a process she calls ‘inclusion and exclusion.’
“You know, there are little things to include, like you need two girls and they’re gonna be blonde and they’re gonna be together,” Fall explains of her thought process when looking for her daughters in a large crowds.
Fall’s condition is not a case of blurred vision or confusing faces. When the housewife turns away for even a minute, it’s as if she’s never seen the person the moment she looks back.
Justin Feinstein, a clinical neuropsychologist at the University of Iowa who specialises in prosopagnosia, explains that even the most famous of faces are strangers to Fall.
When Dr. Feinstein asked her to identify President Obama in a photo, she could not recognise him because of the basketball clothes he was wearing.
Although doctors are sure of how Fall lost her facial recognition, they have yet to grasp exactly what goes wrong in the brains of people with face blindness.
“No cure. What she has now, she has for the rest of her life,” said Dr. Snyderman, who spent an eight hours with Fall studying her condition.
In an interview with the Today show, Fall said, "I don’t know my kids, but I get to pick them up every day from school and they hold my hand and they are excited and they wrap their arms around me and they tell me, ‘Thank you.’ What more do I need? I mean, I find so much strength from the simple gifts I get to experience every day."
