 HOPE FOR THE
VISUALLY IMPAIRED
The Low Vision Resource Center helps them live life as fully as possible
Written by KAREN KOLIVOSKY
Photography by JEFFREY TRUITT
Bonnie Truax visited her ophthalmologist because she needed new glasses. She didn’t expect to learn that she was going blind.
The doctor told her that macular degeneration would eventually rob her of eyesight. Twelve years later, his prediction started to become reality.
Telephone poles began to look wavy. Street signs became impossible to read. When she could no longer tell if a stoplight was red or green, she went home and put away her car keys for good as her vision continued to deteriorate. Within a few years after her first symptoms appeared, Truax was legally blind in both eyes.
When she first began to lose her vision, she searched for a support group where she could meet people who had the same problem and learn about the practical aspects of living with blindness.
While she did find some services for people with visual impairment, there was no active, organized network of visually impaired people in the city. There was no outlet where they could share their experiences and help each other cope with the major life changes that vision impairment brings.
So Truax started one. Today, more than 960 San Antonians are part of the Low Vision Resource Center, a group that includes the Low Vision Club, offering social activities and support for members, and Owl Radio, a daily radio broadcast of the daily newspaper and other programming for the visually impaired.
The center offers the hope that Truax needed when she was first trying to adjust to life with impaired vision. Members learn that they can continue many of the activities they love and maintain as much independence as possible. The group also pushes the boundaries of what other people think the visually impaired can do – and expands what members themselves think they can do.
“They’ve taken a terrible blow to their self-esteem. You feel like you’re not the same person you’ve been all your life. That’s hard,” Truax says. “You have to help them see that they can do a lot of the things they are saying or thinking they can’t do.
Getting started
With help from Dr. Bob Hobson, a physician with the University of Texas Health Science Center Ophthalmology Department, Truax planted the seeds for what would become the Low Vision Resource Center. The two began by establishing a monthly meeting for all of the different local groups that serve the visually impaired so they could learn more about each other.
From there, with guidance from a national organization, the Lighthouse for the Blind, Truax set up a monthly support meeting for visually impaired people.
Staff at the Lighthouse, which promotes employment and other services for the blind, advised Truax that the first meeting would likely draw only a handful of people. Twenty showed up at that first meeting, and it continued to grow from there.
“We just grew so fast in those first years when people found out about us because they were just like I was, they didn’t know where to go,” Truax says.
Truax named it the Low Vision Club, though she’s quick to point out that it’s not an official club — there are no membership dues or meeting minutes. Instead, the club holds monthly meetings with different topics and speakers, along with time for members to socialize. The club also offers a schedule of activities, from bowling to golfing to painting.
“A lot of them don’t get out of the house, and they need socialization, they need to talk to each other. They need to be out and about,” Truax says. “One of my big goals is for that to happen.”
One reason for the success of the club, Truax says, is that it was founded by a visually impaired person. Truax knows firsthand the challenges that people with vision problems face. The club caters to their needs, from providing transportation to volunteers who call members to remind them of upcoming meetings or read the club newsletter to them.
The majority of the club’s members are older people with macular degeneration, which strikes later in life. However, visual impairment presents different challenges to younger people, such as parenting issues and career changes, says Kim Van Hooser, a board member of the Low Vision Resource Center. At age 24 she was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, a hereditary disease. Instead of seeing a 180-degree field of vision, she has seven degrees left.
“You get thrown into an unexpected life curve, an unexpected situation with a new career, the loss of your vision, you can’t drive,” Van Hooser says. “You have to learn all new coping skills.”
A sub-group for younger adults
She started a sub-group called VIBE (Visually Impaired Being Encouraged) for younger adults. Group members in their 30s and 40s requested more active outings, so Van Hooser has organized rock climbing and caving trips. She also started a 5k run last year as a fund-raiser for the club.
Van Hooser, the mother of a 10-year-old, an entrepreneur and a full-time student, regularly tests the boundaries of what she can do. With several half-marathons and triathlons under her belt, she is now training for an Ironman triathlon in 2008. But she also understands that people need encouragement to try new things when their world has been turned upside down by vision loss.
“It is really hard to get visually impaired people out of their comfort zone. We live by the limitations of what other people’s expectations are. At first I lived in a bubble, thinking ‘I can’t do that.’ Once I got over that and started getting out and climbing a few mountains, I learned there are really no limits,” Van Hooser says. “I tend to think in terms of what am I able to do instead of what I can’t do.”
With support, medical progress and technology, the limits of visual impairment are being continuously pushed back, says Truax. One of the club’s offerings is an annual expo that showcases services, products and technology for the visually impaired.
Truax relies on her computer, equipped with a program that reads documents to her. Talking watches, closed-circuit televisions that magnify everything from sticky notes to magazines and display them on a monitor, and wallets that sort dollar bills are all tools that help the visually impaired maintain independence
.
“It’s so hard on you because you feel your loss of self-esteem, you feel you can’t do anything anymore. There are all the can’ts,” Truax says. “But if you begin to see — well, I can use the computer and there’s a machine that reads for me — once you get to that, you get the feeling that you can do things.”
Medical breakthroughs are happening as well, Truax says. She recently received a treatment that has restored her ability to see people’s faces after years of having only enough peripheral vision “to keep me from bumping into things,” she says.
“It’s a wonderful time to be visually impaired, if you have to be visually impaired, because technology is so great, and it’s growing and more new ideas are coming up,” Truax says.
One idea that Truax tapped into five years ago is Owl Radio, a radio service that broadcasts readings of daily newspapers and national magazines. In addition to national programming, the station airs three hours daily of local volunteers reading the Express-News and other publications. Those who are unable to read print can get special Owl Radio receivers through the club at no cost.
Volunteers are behind many of the programs of the Low Vision Resource Center, which celebrated its 10th anniversary last year. A dedicated group of retired nurses helps provide transportation to meetings. Volunteers come in daily to read the newspaper for broadcast on Owl Radio. Volunteers guide club members from their cars to the meeting rooms.
Volunteers and monetary donations are always needed, Truax says. Funding comes through grants from the Kronkosky Foundation and other organizations, along with donations from members and others. From the beginning, Truax has made sure that club resources were available to anyone regardless of ability to pay.
As it plans for the future, the center’s 12-member board is focused on expanding financial support for programs and creating awareness to reach anyone who might benefit from its services. The board brings additional muscle to Truax’s original goal of keeping hope alive in those who have lost their vision.
“Getting them the hope that they can find help and become as independent as they possibly can be. That’s my goal with everybody who comes into the club,” Truax says. |
