Blind Bucket List

Let’s talk about bucket lists. When I was told that I had this disease, retinitis pigmentosa, it was actually confirmed when I was around 40-years-old. The doctors attached electrodes to my numbed eyes and shot light into the back of my eyes to look at my retinas. The doctors were able to definitively identify what was happening as retinitis pigmentosa (RP). This so disturbed the physician that did the test, that he escaped the area and I had to go search him down to get the diagnosis, which was RP. At that time there was no medication and no cure. It’s an incurable genetic disease. Today, we do have some additional action on that front in terms of gene therapy. 

After I cried a lot, I made a bucket list of all the things that I wanted to do that would be helpful if I was sighted. I made the list and I methodically went through it and crossed stuff off until the list was empty. And then I made a second list of everything that I could dream of doing and I did everything on that list too.

So, today I am grateful that I still have central vision and I’m so happy that I had that time to be able to do the things that I had always dreamed of doing in my life before I lost my vision. You know, many people don’t have the ability to do that but RP can move really fast in terms of losing your vision, or it can kind of plod along, mine is the plodding kind. I’m really grateful for that and now I’m able to stay in the day, be really grateful today that I can see, and it may not be what you can see but I can see enough. So think about that. Think about what you really want to do in your life. Write it down and don’t wait. Just don’t wait.