Stevie Nicks Grappling With Macular Degeneration

Stevie Nicks

Anybody who caught Stevie Nicks’ two sets on “Saturday Night Live” in October — during which she performed her brand-new female empowerment anthem “The Lighthouse” as well as her classic “Edge of Seventeen” — now knows that her pipes are still as strong and true as they were when she made her SNL debut in the 1970s as a member of Fleetwood Mac. 

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of her eyesight, according to The Palm Beach Post. 

Also in October, the legendary 76-year-old singer — a two-time inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame — revealed in a Rolling Stone interview that she’d recently been diagnosed with wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD).

In October, 76-year-old rock legend Stevie Nicks revealed in a Rolling Stone interview that she's been diagnosed with wet age-related macular degeneration and, in order to try to stave off disease progression, will need to receive injections in both eyes every six to nine weeks for the rest of her life. 

As she would come to learn, macular degeneration is an eye disease that occurs when the central part of the retina, call the macula, at the back of one’s eye(s) starts to waste away for unknown reasons and eventually starts to affect the sufferer’s central vision.

There are two kinds of macular degeneration — dry and wet. Anywhere from 80% to 90% of the 20 million macular degeneration sufferers in the U.S. have the former.   The latter, which Nicks has, is far rarer — and more serious.   

Macular degeneration is often an inherited eye disease, but it also develops in people with no family history. While age is the most common cause of the disease, people can develop it at any age. (Non-age-related macular degeneration is often associated with such factors as diabetes, traumatic head and/or brain injuries, serious infections and/or a diet lacking in proper nutrients, among others.)