Category Archives: Retinitis Pigmentosa

Photo by Heather B. Allison Photography Ricks said that through writing her memoir she found her voice and healing by sharing it with others. By Christy Wolyniak Ballard author, Ingrid Ricks, has been an unstoppable force since the release of her memoir, Hippie Boy - a coming-of-age story of a girl grappling with abuse, crippling poverty, love, and religious misuse. Hippie Boy sets the stage for a young Ricks up until the age of sixteen, who travels as a tool-selling vagabond with her father in a desperate attempt to escape a dysfunctional home environment with a controlling stepfather and devout Mormon mother. Ricks story was a long time in coming to fruition. Afraid to hurt her family by exposing painful memories, Ricks endured the rubble from her past. Upon being diagnosed with a rare degenerative eye disease in 2004 known as Retinitis Pigmentosa, her doctor recognized that Ricks was suppressing serious issues from her childhood and said to her, If you dont think that carrying this inside of you is impacting your physical health, youre crazy. Ricks hastened to write as her vision was now threatened. Her daughters, Hannah, 11 and Sydney, 15, were also part of her inspiration in … Continue reading →

Every tea cup tells a story. Residents from around the community are encouraged to bring their tea cups with the stories that go along with the glassware to the fundraiser Tea Thyme in Texas at The Overlook in Atascocita Jan. 26 at 2 p.m. This will also give residents the chance to hear Jacob Desormeauxs story of his battle of Usher Syndrome. Jacobs parents, Sonia and Kent Desormeaux, founded Eye on Jacob after Jacob was diagnosed with Usher Syndrome as a way to fundraise for research and finding a cure for the disease. Jacobs aunt, Tammy Broussard, who lives in the Humble area, wanted to host a tea time for residents in the community where they could enjoy different kinds of tea, fellowship, re-stringing pearls and fun to raise more money for the Eye on Jacob foundation. We are very excited to have the opportunity to have an event like this to raise money for Eye on Jacob, Broussard said. There isnt a lot of events like this where we get to share our love of tea and its all for a good cause. Jacob will also be on hand at the Tea Thyme in Texas where he will share … Continue reading →

She originally wanted to become a family physician, but Penny Robredo Bundoc, who is visually impaired, sort of stumbled upon rehab medicine. It was an accident of fate that had meant a world of difference to Filipinos with disabilities. When Bundoc applied for a residency in Family Medicine at the UP-PGH, she learned that it was no longer offered as a specialty. On her advisers suggestion, she went into Rehabilitation Medicine instead. That decision ultimately meant that PWDs (persons with disability) in the Philippines no longer had to be shut in, but could instead stride out of their homes to go to school, earn a living and otherwise have fuller lives. Coping with poverty is hard; (more so) when a family member has a disability, mused Bundoc, who has become a staunch advocate of PWDs. Poverty is magnified and multiplied for such families, she said, explaining that an able family member is usually designated as the caregiver, which means one less member contributing to family finances. The emotional and psychological trauma adds to the burden, said this medic. Our society values physical beauty so much. Those with obvious physical disabilities are pitied at best, and at worst, are mocked and … Continue reading →

3 Jan 2014 19:00 Businessman's Blindability training helps disabled people to use tablet devices Blind businessman Matthew Carr has launched a unique firm offering key guidance on how to use an iPad for fellow sight-loss sufferers. The Rowley Regis 30-year-olds company, Blindability, provides specialist training for partially-sighted and blind people in how to make full use of iPads and other IT devices. The disabled Black Country man, registered blind in 2007 due to retinitis pigmentosa, which kills eye-cells, identified a niche in the market when he realised there was no specialist IT training for blind and partially-sighted people. Putting it simply, no-one else does what I do and there are lots of people that need my help, Matthew said. The iPad is a great tool to aid learning, independence and communication for people who are blind and partially-sighted, hearing-impaired and for people with serious physical disabilities. The iPad has a number of settings and applications that make it incredibly useful for disabled people. I provide training to teaching and support staff in schools as well as individuals on how to use the iPad, along with the accessibility features it contains. With calls coming in all the time, I think Im … Continue reading →

This weeks Wearable Tech roundup features edible batteries, 3D-printed eye cells, and a pacemaker the size of a pill. Advancements in medicine have given birth to ingestible diagnostics, tools like tiny cameras that can uncover cancer in your digestive track, or a pill that can monitor if you are adhering to your medication plan. There are also implants to help your body functioning normally, but require a battery change every few years or so, which means the device will be surgically taken out then put back in. These minute devices also requires a source of power to function, but their own batteries may not last that long. So researchers have found a way to deliver safe amounts of electricity to these devices that can also be ingested. Edible batteries are made from the pigment of cuttlefish, which can discharge 10 microamperes of electricity for a period of five hours, with an ideal performance of 24 hours, as long as something ingested is likely to remain in the body. The melanin from the cuttlefish served as the anode in the studys aqueous sodium-ion battery, and manganese dioxide served as the cathode. The chemical reaction between the two produces the electric charge … Continue reading →

Here at Maclean's, we appreciate the written word. And we appreciate you, the reader. We are always looking for ways to create a better user experience for you and wanted to try out a new functionality that provides you with a reading experience in which the words and fonts take centre stage. We believe you'll appreciate the clean, white layout as you read our feature articles. But we don't want to force it on you and it's completely optional. Click "View in Clean Reading Mode" on any article if you want to try it out. Once there, you can click "Go back to regular view" at the top or bottom of the article to return to the regular layout. Mauro Fermariello/Science Photo Library Ouch, be gone Doctors at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto have identified two proteins that could form the basis of a test to diagnose male infertility by identifying whether sperm is present in seminal fluid. This would be a drastic improvement over current methods: expensive genetic tests or sperm retrieval procedures and biopsies that require inserting needles into the testicles, which can be uncomfortable and unsuccessful. The new test could be available within two years. The Arugs … Continue reading →

Seeing Tomorrow Jack Morris has limited vision due to retinitis pigmentosa. While he's given up playing baseball, a favorite pastime, Jack and his family are hopeful for tre... By: FndFightingBlindness … Continue reading →

Treatment of Retinitis Pigmentosa: normal vision after 9 months For more information, or to book an appointment, please contact us: tel:1-877-737-7876 toll free (Canada and US only) 1-604-737-7876 (International) e-mail: ... By: Weidong Yu … Continue reading →

Me Driving (Prt 2) Having an eye disease Retinitis Pigmentosa, that's robbing me of my vision since birth...I've never been able to nor will I ever be able to drive!! My twin s... By: SoxPatsFan74 … Continue reading →

For Sydneys White family, every outing, every occasion, takes on a special meaning. Matthew, Samuel, and Kathryn White might only be seven, nine and 12 years old respectively, but they already have a bucket list, and theyre building up a memory bank that they hope will last a lifetime. Their father Dave White says "our job is to raise them to be resilient, and to be tough and to be able to cope with all the things that are going to happen, because everything will be harder for them." The children's mother, Beth White, knows what lies ahead. She was only five years old when she started to develop problems with her vision. Beth met her future husband when she was 15. By the age of 21 she was legally blind. Specialists thought Beth had a degenerative eye disease called Retinitis pigmentosa, or RP, but Beth always questioned that diagnosis. When the couple wanted to start a family, they sought advice on the chances of passing on Beth's disease. "We had gone to geneticists and we didn't really get a conclusive answer, so we sort of did take a massive risk," she says. The children all underwent testing from the … Continue reading →