Living With Low Vision

This story begins with a fall down a flight of stairs but ends with a bit of hope. A few months back as my family gathered for a little reunion, my aunt had gone upstairs to grab a coat for one of the little kids. Minutes later she came down the dimly lit stairwell the […]

Macular degeneration is the loss of central vision – it is not blindness but rather low vision. Low vision means that a person’s vision cannot be corrected by prescription glasses or through any medical or surgical intervention. Magnifiers for macular degeneration are meant to make the most of one’s usable vision. Often people want to […]

Getting to and from the grocery store, navigating the aisles of superstores with dairy products on one end and fresh produce on the other, along with finding and selecting your favorite cereal, salad dressing, or coffee creamer can be overwhelming for sighted people let alone those with vision problems.  Fortunately there are now many options […]

My in-laws who are in their late eighties and early nineties make regular trips to their local drug store to pick up their prescription drugs.  My father-in-law who has wet macular degeneration no longer drives and there are no family members who live close by which means my mother-in-law does the driving. A phone conversation […]

On a recent trip to Switzerland, we were reminded of how important timeliness is to this little country.  When a tour participant asked the tour guide to wait a few minutes for her friends to join us, the tour guide reminded her that we were in Switzerland and everything starts right on time.  That goes […]

How do you like to keep track of time?  Being able to manage your own schedule, reminders and appointments is an important way of staying independent. Did you know that there are several different ways your watch can communicate the time, provide you with an alarm, or tell you the day and date as well? […]

“I need your help. But please remember, there is a fine line between helping me help myself, and doing it for me, leaving me with a feeling of helplessness and dependency.  Sometimes, because everything seems so much more difficult, I just wish you would take care of it all for me.  But down deep, for […]

“I am a little worried as my eyes seem to be getting worse. I’ve been under a tremendous amount of stress the past month,” shared a patient with macular degeneration. Anyone with a degenerative eye disease can relate and knows about the anxiety and stress vision loss creates. For those with age-related macular degeneration (AMD) […]

A favorite app and website of mine that will quickly become one of your favorites too is LibriVox.  The app is free and can be downloaded to your mobile phone, iPod, or tablet.   These free public domain (in the United States)  audiobooks can be listened to on-line, downloaded to your iPod or phone, or burned […]

This week I met my niece for supper who ran her first Boston Marathon. A cross country runner in high school and college, running is one of her passions.  Although she is fully sighted, did you know that many visually impaired people run the Boston Marathon?  In fact this year’s 2017 Boston Marathon marks the […]