SEE your Loved One through Macular Degeneration
Raymond Dierker
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2012 by Raymond Dierker
Smashwords Edition, License Notes.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Introduction
Your loved one is not alone.
Today, approximately 1.8 million Americans have a loved one, age 40 and over with advanced age related macular degeneration. Due to the ageing baby boomer population, the National Eye Institute estimates that nearly another 3 million Americans will have a loved one with AMD by 2020.
Globally, it is the leading cause of vision loss and is responsible for some 50% of visual impairment.
AMD is the leading cause of severe vision loss in the developed world.
It affects the families of over a million Canadians.
According to the Deloitte Access Economics report, more than 1.7 million Australian families will have a loved one with Macular Degeneration within the next 20 years.
There are similar estimates for England and most other developed nations.
These numbers will continue to grow in the future, because of the ageing of the world’s population.
If you are reading this now, you most likely have found this offering somewhere in the Health and Fitness section of an ebook catalog.
Unlike the other selections available, this one is totally unique.
After careful review, you will note that there is not a MD title after my name.
I am also not a low vision or any other kind specialist.
In fact, I have no professional designation whatsoever.
What I do have is thirty years of experience assisting my mother as she progressed through the various stages of macular degeneration.
She has been legally blind for about half that time.
She is also diabetic, on a blood thinner, suffers from chronic arthritis and now has a pacemaker
She will soon be celebrate her 90th birthday and continues to live independently in her own apartment..
Two recent events have inspired creation of this ebook.
Recently, my mother had a serious illness and ended up in rehab for several months. Before she could be released from rehab and back to her apartment, she had to have in home health care for several weeks.
During this process, she had many different in home professionals work with her to get her ready to return to her apartment on her own. Over and over again, these different in home professionals raved about the procedures that we have set up to enable her at age 90 with all these ailments to continue to live independently.
Recently, her arthritis has regressed and she needs to spend more time in a wheel chair.. To increase her quality of life, she decided to spend over a thousand dollars on a lift chair. During the sales process, the salesman informed her that the chair would require operation of a complex seven button remote. It she pushed the wrong button, the back of the chair could hit the back wall and burn out the motor. Considering that she could not see the buttons or read what they said, this was very intimidating.
Fortunately, we were able to implement the special procedures in this ebook and she was able to operate the chair easily in spite of the complexity of the remote and her loss of central vision.
She continues feeling very comfortable living on her own.
The purpose of this book is not to be a manual on macular degeneration.
Many of these are already available to you in book stores and in the Health and Fitness section that you found this ebook. They are also written by qualified physicians and low vision specialists that are very knowledgeable in this area. They are the kinds of books we read thirty years ago when my mother received her diagnosis.