S2E4: Jamika Porter - Navigating Life with Low Vision

In this episode, Hilary Stunda speaks with Jamika Porter. Jamika shares her personal story, realizing as a child of 6 that she couldn’t see as well as her peers, to adjusting to life as a school-aged young girl, to a college student and then graduate student, who received her Masters degree in communications.

What she discovered along the way, after numerous doctors, was that the conditions she had ran in her family, which is interesting as RP is a rare genetic disorder, affecting only between 82,000 and 110,000 people in the United States. Her mother was one of nine children and four of her uncles also had some form of an eye condition as well as her grandfather and many of her cousins.

Jamika was diagnosed when she was about 15 when she saw a retina specialist. Before, she just kept getting new eyeglasses with a new prescription every year, or every six months or so. When she was 30, she started to seek treatment on her own just outside of regular eyeglasses.

Jamika says that growing up with relatives who also had eye conditions helped to prepare Jamika. Since her mother was almost totally blind, she learned how to do certain things that made life easier, like placing furniture in certain configurations.

Jamika tells Hilary how difficult it was growing up with Stargardt’s and RP and that she mainly kept it to herself as staying silent about the condition was easier than telling people what was wrong. An eye specialist told her when she was 15 that she would probably be blind by the time she was 40.

The turning point was when, in her late 20s, she worked for a law firm that offered very good insurance. That’s when she started going back to the eye doctor. After seeing a number of physicians, Jamika eventually found a doctor that treated her well and did not consider her a case study.

Jamika explains that she is learning to accept the Assistive Technology around her. She says that she uses her Kindle to read ebooks, and a Ruby device for everyday use. She continues, saying that to get around she uses Lyft and Uber and relies on a few friends and a sister who will come and take her places. But mostly, she takes care of herself.

What has served her the most is reaching out to friends for support when she comes up against people who don’t understand what she has and what she is going through. Learning that “everybody has some story.”

Jamika learned is that maternal grandfather probably had Macular Degeneration but considering he was born in 1890, no one knew. Recently Jamika had an aunt pass away who was 101. She recalls how she lived independently with her husband for years and that she managed because of the way she set up her house, the lighting and furniture and kitchen. She cooked and was able to take care of herself. Jamika hopes to live that way.

In the final part of this episode founder and executive director of The Support Sight Foundation, Dawn Prall speaks with Mike Wood from Vispero for the Product Spotlight.

For the past 15 years, Mike has been working with schools as well as with the senior market. Mike talks to Dawn about the Assistive Technology devices that Vispero makes for people who have low vision.

Visperohas been around since 1975. The name is the combination of two Latin words, one being Visio and the other being Spiro. Visio means the vision, and Spiro means hope. Mike tells Dawn how this is appropriate as their mission is to provide hope, determination and independence through all of their different products, whether it be hardware or software that support those with low vision.

Mike and Dawn talk about what some of the warning signs for those who think they might have low vision. Mike says it’s often something that can't be corrected with lenses, glasses, or eye drops. If you have trouble reading even after you've had corrective lenses or have trouble recognizing faces or doing basic things around the house like