Meet Mother-of-Two Suffering From 'Face Blindness' Who Cannot Remember What Her Children Look Like (Photos)

 

A mother has lost the ability to remember the face of her children even though she is not blind. The woman who suffers from a rare medical condition that leaves her unable to even recognise her own face in the mirror.
 
KC Andrew, 60, suffers from prosopagnosia – also known as face-blindness – a neurological disorder which used to be considered rare, but specialists now believe affects up to 1 in 50. It has gotten worse that she frequently mistake her own reflection as another person and said 'excuse me', before realising she seeing herself in a mirror.
 
The woman who has had the condition since birth, has learned to live with it by telling people she is simply 'very bad with faces.'
Her father Robert, 89, also has face blindness while, interestingly, her mother Joyce, 82, is the complete opposite as a 'super recogniser.'
 
'To me, it seems like a marvel that most people can just look at someone and know who they are without talking to them or studying their mannerisms closely,' said Ms Andrews.
 
'Mum would scold me for never saying, "Hi, Mrs Smith" and I'd go, "Who's Mrs Smith?"
 
'I may have talked to her every Sunday, but I didn't know what she looked like. I didn't have a clue.' She revealed a most funny incident relating to her face-blindness. Ms Andrews did not realise just how bad her facial recognition was until she failed to recognise her own mother whilst at work in a large department store when she was 19. Another extreme example of her prosopagnosia happened when ex-husband Charlie Rakestraw threw her a surprise party – and she failed to recognise any of the guests.
 
'The wait staff guided us into a back room, and all these people were whooping and yelling. I couldn't for the life of me understand why,' she recalled.

As a young woman, she toured with a professional theatre company alongside her best friend Lori Jean, giving performances and workshops in schools, churches and with the military.

 

 

She recalled: 'That could be tricky, because when we were on tour, we'd have people put us up in their homes.

 

Ms Andrews also told of how she avoids the cinema as she finds it too confusing, preferring instead to watch animations at home as opposed to real-life films or television shows.

 

'I recognise faces in animated things. I often describe people as looking like cartoons, actually – drawings are so much easier for me,' she explained. 

 

 

Prosopagnosia is a neurological disorder characterised by the inability to recognise people's faces.

 

Also known as 'face-blindness', the severity of the condition depends on the degree of impairment a person suffers.

 

Some people with prosopagnosia may only struggle to recognise a familiar face, while others will be unable to discriminate between unknown faces, and in more severe cases sufferers cannot distinguish a face as being different from an object.

 

Some sufferers are unable to recognise their own faces.

 

The condition is not related to memory loss, impaired vision or learning disabilities.

 

It is thought to be the result of abnormalities, damage, or impairment in the right fusiform gyrus - a fold in the brain that appears to coordinate facial perception and memory.

 

Prosopagnosia can result from stroke, traumatic brain injury, or some neurodegenerative diseases.

 

In some cases the condition is congenital, and present at birth.

 

It appears to run in families, which makes it likely to be the result of a genetic mutation or deletion.

 

Some degree of prosopagnosia is often found in children with autism and Asperger's Syndrome.

 

Treatment of the condition focuses on helping sufferers develop compensatory strategies, including relying on voice recognition, clothing, or unique physical attributes.

 

Source: Dailymail and National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke