Seeing is important and at the same time a blessing. But not everyone is blessed with the ability to see perfectly. In fact, poor eyesight is a common problem in any and every country. People who are born blind or are going blind are not unheard of. These people who experience problems with their eyesight can experience physical and emotional stress as a result of their condition. You may be thinking, what can we do for them? How can we support them? Here are some actions that you can take to make them feel secure and valued even if they have difficulties with their eyesight.
Help Them Find Solutions
The process of gradually losing good eyesight or all of it altogether can be discouraging for many who experience it. Because of this, it can be difficult to not only physically see, but also to take notice of any solutions that may be applicable to the situation. A way of supporting someone whose eyesight is degrading is to help them see these solutions and encourage them to try. It can be as simple as providing aids for visually impaired persons such as glasses, or something a little more complex such as surgery. For those who are already blind, you can help direct them to resources such as audio or Braille books or even service animals.
Be There for Them
In some cases, the doctor finds that the patient can no longer be cured. Because of this, they may lose hope and feel like they’re a burden or are not worth it. As with any other kind of major loss, their morale may go down so much that they lose interest in life. It could be a very hard moment to accept but having a person, someone who’s beside them, no matter if it’s friends or family, to help them feel secure would make it easier to take. Whether they need a shoulder to cry on or need someone to hug or talk to about it, providing emotional and moral support can have a large impact.
Learn to Live With Them
When worst comes to worst, and no surgery or therapy can help with the condition, things will certainly become much different from what they were before. There are activities that can no longer be done as usual. But life shouldn’t stop there. To encourage them to continue with living their life normally, you need to learn with them on how to live in that situation. You as one of their guardians and them as a patient should get to know how to do different tasks in a new way, such as reading without using their eyes. When you do this, the situation can change for the better in the future.
Being visually impaired is not just something that the patients experience. It also affects the people around them. Despite everything that these people are going through, stay with them and don’t treat them as less of a person because of the situation. Things change and we just need to be flexible when it comes to those changes.
