SEMPHIS reveals career-altering degenerative eye disease

While watching the IEM Road to Rio Americas RMR today, it appeared that Kory "SEMPHIS" Friesen was wearing aviators while seated behind his team. In fact, he was wearing the aviators and he was coaching. Now, while it may be illegal to look sick as hell while coaching, for Kory, he was allowed to do so by ESL as a medical accommodation.

In a series of tweets late this afternoon, SEMPHIS revealed that he is battling keratoconus, an eye disease that results from the thinning of the cornea, or the outer surface of the eyeball. As that layer of the eyeball thins it results in the jelly inside the eyeball pushing and protruding out in a cone shape, which causes visual impairment. It is difficult to correct with lenses as the disease can continue to progress and shift visual acuity and require constant changing of prescription lenses.

From the tweets we can infer that SEMPHIS may unfortunately fall into the small subset of people with keratoconus who also have corneal hydrops. These patients experience discomfort when exposed to bright lights, a phenomena known as photophobia. Given that ESL is hosting the RMR in a studio setting, the production spotlights shone onto the players has greatly affected him and his ability to coach and previously ended his playing career. As one would imagine, this disease would also have the potential to wreak havoc on one's ability to look at screens. However, by wearing the sunglasses the lights become less impactful and SEMPHIS is able to avoid debilitating headaches during the event, much like how a doctor may allow an athlete with a concussion to wear sunglasses indoors at school as a reasonable accommodation.

SEMPHIS states that the eye specialist that he has consulted claims the issues should "subside over time" but he hasn't noticed any change and continues to struggle with the issue. He has stated that the only other remedy is a cornea transplant, however that would only alleviate the issue for 10 years and it's unclear if that is the perfect solution to the current issue. There is another intermediate therapy called corneal collagen cross-linking, however without knowing more about SEMPHIS's condition it is difficult to know whether his condition is too advanced to qualify for it.

Dust2.us wishes SEMPHIS the best while he deals with an unfortunate disease and hopes that the squad can continue to qualify for the Rio Major. If it is any consolation, we also think he deserves "Coolest Coach" award.