Slutty Dorothy shoots a rifle LIKE A BOSS

[campylobacter]

• Mon, 23:00: My best friend is going blind. :(
• Mon, 23:55: Mili Avital & James Spader! So cute! <3 Love this movie. :) http://j.mp/kioFIO
• Tue, 00:18: EPILOG: Daniel saw in his peripheral vision two men in business suits loitering at the edge of the park, near the fence… http://j.mp/mLHd2s
• Tue, 00:35: DANIEL: Déjà vu. TEAL'C: I am unfamiliar with that term. DANIEL: Um, it means I feel like I've been here before. … http://j.mp/kkLAvY
• Tue, 08:09: #Stargate http://tumblr.com/xxs2nxyhc5 Jack O’Neill, favorite male character picspam
• Tue, 08:13: #Stargate http://tumblr.com/xxs2nxzwhi Slutty Dorothy shoots a rifle LIKE A BOSS #ValaMalDoran
  
• Tue, 08:16: #GillianAnderson http://tumblr.com/xxs2ny0zwx GILLIAN ANDERSON in vintage Dior bolero custom-made for Wallis Simpson
• Tue, 08:46: RT @Alyssa_Milano: Twitter rolls out email notification for retweets, favorites☛ http://ow.ly/51l9Q /via @designtaxi @cubfancurt
• Tue, 09:05: RT @Pogue: My new Scientific American column is up! Customer-review sites: Can you trust them? http://bit.ly/k6PZ68
• Tue, 09:06: RT @MCSeto: @Pogue Perhaps we need customer review sites for customer review sites?
• Tue, 11:30: RT @GateFic: Reminder: nominations close in less than 5 days! Hurry, hurry, hurry!

Comments

[franthewndrhrse.livejournal.com]

My best friend is going blind. :(

What's going on? I'm asking and I'm nosy -- my son has a genetic condition that causes blindness. He's almost legally blind at 17.

[campylobacter.livejournal.com]

shakespherical has had more than 10 eye surgeries since 1994. 3 vitrectomies, 3 lens replacements, retina re-attachment, at least 5 laser "sand-blastings" of an artificial lens. Steroids injected directly into her eyes, gone blind twice, has a permanent macular degeneration in her right eye and thus a large fuzzy area smack in the middle of it. Severe photophobia, night blindness, internal eye hemorrhaging, disintegrating ligaments inside her eye.

The condition is genetic. :(

I've been reading her posts and emails and it tears me apart that the more frequent occurrence of typos in them aren't the result of carelessness, but increasingly impaired eyesight. She's so scared. Her latest (13th) eye surgery was to fix a lens "stuck" to her retina. They "scraped" it off to remove it and the vitreous before adding a new lens into the anterior section. But her vision hasn't improved. It's worse, and she can only read on a monitor if the type is huge, the background is black, and the text white.

I'm crying just thinking about it.

[franthewndrhrse.livejournal.com]

Yikes. You and your friend have my sympathies. The surgeries sound painful. Has her optic nerve been damaged?

I wish I had words of wisdom, but I don't. My father was blind.
Growing up, I didn't think much about it as he did so many things for my sister and I, just not things that involved seeing. I worry more for my son because as an adult, I DO think about the difficulties.

[campylobacter.livejournal.com]

I don't know about her optic nerve. All those eye procedures squick me so much that I can't keep track of everything.

How has Franboy coped with his visual impairment? Does he adapt well to assistive technologies, or attempted to learn Braille?

[franthewndrhrse.livejournal.com]

franboy is muddling through. He doesn't need adaptive tech as of yet, but at some point he will.

I asked about the optic nerve because there are some amazing things going on with research. Not that your friend wants more surgeries.

[anna-sg1.livejournal.com]

That gif is amazing and badass. *saves*

EDIT - I posted without reading. So sorry about your friend, hon'. ♥ :(

[campylobacter.livejournal.com]

Yes, bahzinga (http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_llo9egTXkG1qcxcfgo1_500.gif) did a great job with that Vala GIF!

I hope that there's something the eye doctors can do. She'll know by the end of the month.

[thothmes.livejournal.com]

The kindest thing you can do for your friend, (I mean besides the obvious things like investigate screen reader programs and things that will allow her to mouse over text and have it "read" aloud, and that sort of thing where your sightedness will make the time spent less than it would for her) is to make sure she is very careful with her hearing. We have a family friend who was blinded in a car accident in her 30's, and who took up her life again and continued to raise 5 children and see to their needs, and pursue her own interests as they grew, but now in old age she is losing her hearing, and her life is closing in on her.

I am so sorry that she is going through this, and I send you a virtual hug. The nice thing about love is that it never runs out, so pass the hug on to her.

[campylobacter.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I'll make sure she gets hugged as much as possible. :) Please pass on a hug to your friend who's confronting growing silence in her world of darkness.

It's all been making me re-think how I write the HTML for images, too. There's some good tips in this DW entry for adding concise description to the ALT attribute:
http://lightgetsin.dreamwidth.org/308442.html

[thothmes.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link. I'll be sure to look it up soon, when I am no longer Hideously Behind.

[campylobacter.livejournal.com]

Here's the most salient piece of advice from the entry:

"A tree," is not a good description. "Tree, fall, gold," is a great description.

The comments to the entry are basically PREACHING TO THE CHOIR.