Just after winning Big Brother Australia in 2003 for the first time, Reggie Bird began her difficult battle with a rare degenerative eye disease, called retinitis pigmentosa.
She was the first woman to win $250,000 on Big Brother, and later returned in 2022 as an all-star housemate when she took home the prize once again.
Her two appearances on reality television also happened to coincide with her biggest health diagnosis’.
The beloved TV star has shared glimpses into her health journey throughout the years, as she faces the reality of completely losing her eyesight.
Reggie, 50, was declared legally blind 16 years ago after losing 90 per cent of her central vision.
She didn’t quite comprehend how serious the eye disease was until she moved to the Gold Coast and welcomed her daughter Mia, 17.
“”[Mia] started crawling, and I’d never see her. I kept tripping over her and kicking her on the floor,” she told No Filter.
Her health struggles merely continued to worsen following a devastating diagnosis with Usher syndrome in 2022, another rare genetic disease which impacts her hearing and vision.
Overtime, Usher syndrome will completely take away Reggie’s sight and hearing. However, there is no clear timeline for her.
In October of 2022, the two-time Big Brother winner underwent cataract surgery to treat her vision which admittedly improved the sight in her left eye.
In an interview on the Mental As Anyone podcast in December 2024, she confessed her vision is “like looking through a straw.”
“It won’t kill me, but I am going to lose the whole lot,” she said. “When that day comes, I don’t know what I am going to do… It’s really starting to scare me.”
While Reggie’s health journey is far from over, the mother of two teenage children, Mia and Lucas – who was born with cystic fibrosis – still aims to instill positivity into her life and those around her.
“I’ve just got to keep going… There’s worse people off than me. That’s what I always say to myself,” she said on the podcast.
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