Each trip we bring one box of “low vision devices” donated from legally blind people in Canada, and that box is full of quite custom odds and ends, and it seems to have some magical (or spiritual) power. It honestly feels like some other power is working through us. One was a young 27 year old father irreparably blind in the left eye since birth, with a traumatic injury to his good right eye at the age of 8 that left him with a vision of finger counting at 3ft..basically legally blind. He came in with his wife and young baby. A combination of several high powered lenses from that magic box improved this man’s distance vision to a much more functional, but not perfect, state. With several other small but strong custom magnifiers he was actually able to read pretty well, and clearly see his son’s face for the first time. We were almost as happy as he was.
Another patient was a young 10 year old boy, in a wheelchair who had such bad scarring on the front of his eyes from corneal ulcers that we really didn’t hold much hope. After sometime of showing him a variety of strong stand magnifiers (again from that box) he quickly became so engrossed that he tuned all of us out and began reading out loud while his mother beamed. It was a really magical moment.
Dr. Brad McDougall
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