Shades of Fun Day

 

Thursday, May 26, 2011 is Shades of Fun Day

 

The CNIB, Canadian National institute for the Blind is having a fundraiser and awareness event. Wear your shades, protect your eyes and join in a variety of fun activities in your community, your work place, in your school and at home with your family. They have a good down-loadable resource pack that even has fun things like stickers you can print out.

 

From their web page:

The Did you know?

• 75 per cent of vision loss is preventable or treatable.
• UV rays from the sun can damage your eyes and lead to long-term, irreversible vision loss. Sun damage is also a proven risk factor in cataracts and age-related macular degeneration (AMD), the leading cause of vision loss in Canada.
• Eye doctors recommend wearing sunglasses with at least 99 per cent UV protection to avoid sun damage.
  

Vision issues have touched me and so many people in my life. 

My little 5 year old grandson is vision impaired in both eyes for different reasons.  He is wearing corrective lenses and we are patching his better eye in order to force him to use his other eye a little more.  He is going to play therapy and occupational therapy to teach him how to cope better for kindergarten next year. 

Our little guy is legally blind. He talks happily to me about how he is going to grow up to be a bus driver and I am just praying that he will be able to live a good life in a "seeing world". I am hoping that when he is 16 things will have improved enough that he will be able to get a license and be able to do Drivers Ed with the rest of the kids his age.

  My vision was badly affected when I first had my brain injury but I  have had a pretty good recovery. I still struggle to track when reading and I get a lot of headaches because my eyes do not work together as well as they should so I need to rest my eyes frequently, especially when reading.  A paper back novel is not fun anymore. Technically I only "need" a certain amount of magnification according to a regular vision test, but larger print and blowing up my screen size make a huge difference functionally. I am finding that wrap around sun glasses make being outdoors a whole lot more tolerable too.
I also have had trouble with my peripheral vision but I am lucky because that has come back pretty well. I still startle with anything coming from the left and movement on my left side causes me to feel dizzy and nauseated and sometimes I even fall, but we are still working on those issues.

Check out their website.. it has lots of fun fund-raising ideas and a lot of good information. Then go out and support your local vision health organizations!

Remember to wear your shades this Summer.