Were you recently diagnosed as legally blind? Your impaired vision can start to make everyday tasks seem herculean. This is particularly true if you have a degenerative eye condition that will worsen over time. You do have the advantage of living at a time when there are a wide range of resources available to manage activities such as transportation, cooking, and taking medications.
Here are three easy ways you can improve your daily life.
Transportation Service
You might currently rely on public transportation or rides from friends. Public transportation can be overcrowded and run off schedule. Rides from friends aren't always guaranteed. If you have somewhere you need to be frequently and at a specific time, such as the doctor's office or work, then hiring a transportation service will make your daily commutes far easier to manage.
The transportation company will help you establish a schedule and frequent use often comes with financial discounts. Using a driving service will provide you with a reliable, often private means of travel that picks you up and drops you off at your desired location -- not the bus stop three blocks away. For more information, contact Southwest Florida Transportation Group, Inc. or a similar company.
Cooking Aids
Low vision aid catalogs and specialty stores feature a wide range of cooking tools. Products include everyday kitchen items such as a talking microwave or a talking kitchen scale. There are also a number of items to improve your kitchen safety. Available products include a high-contrast cutting board, heat resistant gloves, and a vibrating water boiling alert.
Concerned about buying groceries? You can either search for a grocery delivery service in your area, or ask your transportation service to include grocery store runs during your trips. If you don't have a sighted person to accompany you into the store and can't shop alone, call the store ahead of time and describe what you need. The store will send a clerk out to gather your groceries. You can either pay over the phone with a credit card or pay in person.
Medication Aids
A cost-free way to manage your prescription medication is to ask for different sized bottles. Most retail pharmacies have different sized bottles, or drams, to match to the number of pills needed. Your pharmacist would be happy to provide you a small, medium and large dram to help you keep your medications straight. Note that this works best if you only have three or four types of pills you take.
Do you need assistance with over-the-counter medications? Label recording devices exist that allow you to place a sticker on each bottle that contains a recording of you or a friend saying the name of that medication.
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