statutory blindness

Posted by bill on 11/5/2012 at 5:57 PM

I was at the height of my career (Construction Project Manager) then had a stroke in Dec. 2009 and went nearly completely blind(I have 13% total vision 5% left eye and 8% right eye) the government called it Statutory Blindness, as a result I lost my job and career. I don't know what to do and I am very angry about what happened. My wife and kids are inadvertently catching a great deal of flack from me. I am slowly pushing my family away with my temper, yelling, and out bursts. I don't have anyone to talk to who can understand what I am going through. Before the stroke I worked 60-70 hours a week most my life and now, nothing. Can anyone help? Does anyone understand?

There are currently 2 replies

Re: statutory blindness

Hi, Bill
It sounds like you're going through a really rough time. This is sounding like a story I've heard a few times (few hundred times?) before-- tell me if this is the situation. You have an issue that causes significant loss of vision (you mentioned stroke) and the doctor, after much careful diagnosis and maybe a series of treatments, tells you you you're blind, or uses some other word (I'm not familiar with statutory blindness, could it be legal blindness?). Then, you go home.

Is that kind of what happened? If so, I think I would be feeling angry, too. Even though I would know that anger wouldn't help...

But, there are services to help people adjust to blindness or visual impairment, and they are very, very valuable. I think that might be your next step, if you haven't found out yet what's available in your area. You'll be amazed what kind of pressure these services can take off your life. You'll find out about books in alternate formats-- Talking Books, for example, and techniques for doing things that you used to do with vision-- basic things like eating, but a lot more advance things, like using a computer (looks like you're doing that) and getting transportation. And, you can meet other people who have visual impairments, and learn from them-- and share what you've learned with them.

Give us some details, and we'll see what services are in your area. Meanwhile, you can look in the Directory on this site

http://www.afb.org/directory.aspx

Just put in your state, and you'll get a list. Then you can narrow it down from there. I hope to hear back from you soon!

Re: statutory blindness

Thank you Crista, I will go to the site you sent the link for and "look" around. Thanks again.