[humanser] news

[Karen Rose]

I will try to contact her. I am totally blind marriage and family therapist in Berkeley and San Francisco. Smile. Karen

Sent from my iPhone

> On Oct 25, 2014, at 6:28 PM, JD Townsend via humanser <humanser at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
> 
> Another news story about a blind psychotherapist.  This one a bit of melodrama, but with a positive ending paragraph.
> 
> 
>  The Day My World Went Dark.
> By ELEANOR LEW.  I was watching Diane Sawyer on the evening news, 
> wondering how she manages year after year to look so young, when 
> suddenly her face disappeared.  Now you see.  Now you don't.  One 
> second.  That's all it took.  A dense black inkblot shaped like a 
> map of England and southern Norway suddenly blocked my view of 
> Diane so that all I could see was her blond hair and shoulders.  
> At first, I thought it was the television set.  Changing channels 
> didn't bring her face back, nor did rubbing my eyes.
> 'It's permanent vision loss1' my ophthalmologist said.  'Your 
> optic nerve and retina buckled.
> He drew a picture of the inside of my right eye, the affected 
> one, and explained that my degenerative myopia, an inherited 
> condition that is far less common than ordinary nearsightedness 
> but still a leading cause of blindness worldwide, had caused my 
> eyeball to elongate excessively.  It looked like a house whose 
> walls had been stretched so thin that the roof caved.
> The doctor didn't say much else, didn't make any recommendations 
> for physical or oc'cup'ational therapy, didn't tell me to call 
> him if I noticed any changes.  I left his office shaken.  'What 
> if it happens in my other eye? What if..."
> In the weeks that followed, I began to notice bizarre changes in 
> my right eye.  Frequent flashing lights, like a dying neon tube, 
> sometimes flickering color or bright white light, so intense I 
> swore I could hear them buzz.  I observed my peripheral vision 
> diminishing.  England and Norway morphed into a large, bushy oak 
> tree with a short and wide trunk.  At a park, I came upon 
> children playing.  When I covered my good eye with my hand, I 
> could see only a sliver of sky, and legs and shoes of children 
> running in and out of the tree.
> I wrote off the psychedelic changes to the 'buckling' and didn't 
> bother to call my ophthalmologist.  But I was scared and needed 
> help.
> Calling around, I found little help for the 'partly sighted' 
> until a friend told me to call Ashby Village, one of about 120 
> 'villages' that have been established throughout the country to 
> help seniors live independently in their own homes.  That's how I 
> found Thelma Elkins, a 90-year-old former social worker who had 
> just founded a support group for those losing their vision.
> Thelma and the group have become my lifeline, a place where we 
> can share notes about the newest research and talk about the 
> anger and fears that at times overwhelm us.  At the beginning, a 
> few members didn't see the necessity of opening up and talking 
> about feelings.  They left the group.  The rest of us understood 
> the importance of staying connected to others, of countering the 
> isolation that declining vision brings.
> Together we grieve the death of the independent life we used to 
> live and voice the anguish of being trapped at home, no longer 
> able to drive.  One member talked about feeling outraged that his 
> doctor didn't have time to talk about a vitamin regimen called 
> AREDS2 that might slow the progression of macular degeneration.  
> Another told of the terror she felt when a hallucination of large 
> tropical flowers popped up in front of her eyes while she was 
> driving, a phenomenon called Charles Bonnet syndrome that is 
> caused by the brain's efforts to compensate for vision loss.  We 
> provide comfort when a member recalls his panic after becoming 
> lost in a crowd in a large Greek port and not being able to 
> remember the cruise ship's name.  What we really share is hope.
> As I nonchalantly described the creeping reduction in my 
> peripheral vision to my group, a couple of them urged me to call 
> my doctor and get an appointment for the next day.  I did.  My 
> ophthalmologist's eyebrows lifted as he assessed the changes.  He 
> suspected wet macular degeneration, caused by abnormal blood 
> vessel growth, was contributing to my vision problems and he 
> called my retinologist's office.
> My first eye injection came next.  The retinologist adjusted my 
> chair until it was in a horizontal position, clamped my eyelid to 
> keep it from blinking and then said, 'Look down and to the left! 
> He carefully inserted a hypodermic needle full of medication into 
> my numbed eyeball.  He said I was lucky because the medication, 
> which came on the market in 2006, stops the bleeding and 
> vascularization.
> I felt a prick and noticed a tiny floating water bubble, the 
> medication, and then it burst in my field of vision.  The world 
> turned purple, and I felt slightly faint for a few seconds.  My 
> doctor reached out his hand to shake mine, saying, 'I'll see you 
> again in four weeks.
> The medication is working its magic, and the old oak tree has 
> shrunk back to its original shape of England and Norway.  I have 
> more peripheral vision.  Every day when I wake up, I check to see 
> that my good eye is still inkblot free and that England and 
> Norway are still the same size.
> I still have a hard time talking to friends about my condition 
> because I am scared I will make them feel uncomfortable and drive 
> them away.  I read an article written by a blind woman about how 
> people assume that she can't possibly be intelligent.  They 
> sometimes shout at her, assuming that she's also deaf.  My 
> support group has helped me practice sharing my story with 
> others.
> Recently, I accompanied a blind man I had met at the Oakland 
> Lions Center for the Blind to the BART station.  When my new 
> friend and I got on the train, his white cane, signifying his 
> blindness, prompted four people to offer their seats so fast that 
> I could feel the wind from their movements.  We took two of those 
> vacated seats.  I was happy to note the power of the white cane.  
> If and when it is time for me to use one, I will be ready.
> Eleanor Lew is a marriage and family therapist and practices in 
> Berkeley and Emeryville, Calif.
> 
> 
> JD Townsend LCSW
> Helping the light dependent to see.
> Daytona Beach, Earth, Sol System
> <JDTownsend.vcf>
> _______________________________________________
> humanser mailing list
> humanser at nfbnet.org
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/humanser_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for humanser:
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/humanser_nfbnet.org/rosekm%40earthlink.net