Vision Health
(Globe & Mail insert)
You can overcome vision loss
Inspiring stories abound of people with vision problems who lead active lives
Randy Firth is a busy man with countless meetings with government officials and Toronto media.
With two small children, and a third on the way, his life away from the office is equally hectic.
In his early 40s, Mr. Firth has been industrious and determined, while enjoying an enviable lifestyle. It's an impressive outcome following a car accident in 1979 that changed his life.
"I literally had perfect vision one minute and zip the next," recounts Mr. Firth, the manager of communications and community development in Toronto for the Canadian National Institute for The Blind (CNIB).
Two key messages Mr. Firth shares with others - life continues after vision loss and there is help.
His story is inspiring.
"The question was that while I was still the same guy, what was I going to do with the rest of my life?" Mr. Firth says.
After undergoing a three-month intensive rehabilitation program, Mr. Firth helped others at three consecutive CNIB summer youth programs as a counsellor, while studying social services at Centennial College.
Most CNIB clients do not experience total vision loss at a young age like Mr. Firth. But all have benefited from the services offered by the CNIB at no cost to clients.
Regarded as the nation's primary provider of vision loss support services, the CNIB is approaching a century of helping Canadians who are blind, visually impaired or deafblind.
Today, more than 105,000 Canadians with vision loss have regained their independence through CNIB programs such as learning to use a white cane, the use of low-vision technical aids and a library service among the best in the world.
"People need to be trained to do all the daily activities they did before their vision loss," explains Patricia Campbell, a vision rehabilitation nurse at the CNIB in Halifax.
"Vision loss is one of the most feared experiences of
aging.
"It affects every aspect of your life.
"Most of our clients have low vision, but are not blind," she
comments.
"We're concerned here with what vision you have left and how to make
the
most of it. We ask, `What do you want to do with the rest of your vision?
"What's the most important thing for you to do?' "
Craig Oliver, a popular CTV reporter in Ottawa, has not had to reach far for those answers.
Canadian viewers would never have known of his longstanding glaucoma condition, had he not spoken up to boost public awareness.
"The incidence of these eye diseases, macular degeneration, glaucoma and vision loss through diabetes, are all going up," notes Mr. Oliver, who has lived with vision deterioration from his disease of high pressure in the eyes for more than 20 years.
With the assistance of network producers to whom he dictates his scripts, the use of ad lib while on camera and an attitude of good humour, Mr. Oliver's condition has not significantly affected his working life. Leaping provinces, Betty Sobkowich of Winnipeg has also found answers to living with vision loss.
Now in her seventies, she lost part of her vision 14 years ago through an early onset of AMD, reducing the central vision in one eye, and later the other. Eventually, she was told she would have to stop driving. "Giving that up was quite a problem," she recalls. "It's like getting your wings clipped. You can't do the things you usually do." With the support of her husband and the help of the local CNIB, Mrs. Sobkowich's life took flight again.
"They are so supportive," she says of the organization.
"At first, I was there getting help, and they came to my house to do things like mark my stove [with large-print indications on the dials]. Now I volunteer there. I go to the CNIB quite a bit. I have a dance program there - my husband and I are partners."
