Back on my stride again. This is my third day at the counseling center so I am in my groove for a few days.
Making plans for Monday and Tuesday. There is a lot to do around the house. If it weren’t housework, I might want to do it!
One of the plans I have for Monday is to accept delivery of a loaner CCTV. Blindness and Visual Services comes through again! God bless them. It might not be new. It is not portable but I can work.
My case manager and I talked about how much low vision equipment must be in storage in homes across the country, maybe even the world. It would be really great if when the equipment is not needed anymore, it would be turned in to local visual services. Knowing there was a convenient lend/lease program would have saved me aggravation.
The real message there? Help others by sharing old but still usable equipment. Turn it in to your local, low vision agency. The price of this stuff is crazy. I think that and I make a good living. For a lot of VIPs (Visually Impaired People) low vision equipment is financially way out of reach. Help!
The second part of the real message is this: don’t suffer in silence. Equipment glitch? Someone might be able to help. Keep looking until you find him.
Of course, one of the reasons people don’t need vision equipment is…ummmm, death. I was looking at some of the articles on AMD on nature.com. There was about 10% of them I actually understood. And that was the titles! Lots of really smart and accomplished people are working on our problem.
Be that as it may, some people in Melbourne (hey, mates!) ran some stats on AMD and mortality. Unfortunately, they discovered we die sooner than those with normal vision. Wet AMD is associated with death from cardiovascular problems and advanced dry AMD is associated with death from tobacco-related cancers.
These are not happy thoughts but I would say forewarned is forearmed. In other words, I have never smoked, and I am not planning on starting. If you have geographic atrophy and smoke, try to quit.
You with wet AMD should recognize you are candidates for cardiovascular disease. Do what is necessary to lower your risk. You know the drill.
The researchers cited by nature.com not only have us dying faster, they also have us potentially losing cognitive skill more quickly. Will the good news never end?
The theory is cognitive enhancing activities are much harder for people who cannot see. We as a group were found to engage in four or five fewer, cognitive enhancing activities per month as compared to sighted seniors. The most affected area was physical activities followed by hobbies and home maintenance. We also came out behind in novel information processing.
While they are not saying it is an absolute certainty we will have a greater cognitive decline, I would not suggest you take any chances. Find engaging activities you can do. Get into visual rehabilitation.
You can affect your own future. Get going!
Written June 10th, 2018