Angela Makes the Right Move
For Angela T., New York City had just become too much. She had lived there most of her adult life, but she was feeling less safe around the traffic and crowds as her vision declined due to wet macular degeneration in one of her eyes and geography atrophy in both. It was time to move closer to her extended family.
So, in 2024, she moved to the northern suburbs of Chicago into a senior living home. She was still on her own, but with her visual impairment, some things seemed a little more difficult. “When you have lived with a condition for a long time, and the change is gradual, you adapt to it,” she says. “When I came out here, everything was different, even the sky and the light were different.”
Fortunately, she had lived in the Chicago area before and knew of The Chicago Lighthouse. Angela made an appointment at our Huber Vision Rehabilitation Center in Glenview, where she saw Dr. Kara Crumbliss and, crucially, set up a home visit with Laura Hayes, one of The Lighthouse’s occupational therapists.
At the home visit, Laura evaluated Angela’s surroundings and provided some simple tools and recommendations to make life easier. She gave Angela a pair of glasses to make the television sharper and helped set up the remote for easier channel changing. Laura recommended another pair of glasses to help with depth perception, so Angela could judge distances when she was out walking. She provided stickers for the microwave to distinguish different buttons and times, introduced Angela to the audio accessibility features on her smartphone, and recommended a lamp to help Angela see her iPad keyboard more easily.
“I can’t say enough about her skill and warmth, and how she made me feel at ease through all of these changes,” Angela says. Angela also credits Laura with connecting her to other Lighthouse resources, including our Seniors Program, where she can meet with other older adults to share experiences and socialize. “It has really made a huge difference in my quality of life,” she says.
April is Occupational Therapy Awareness Month. If you would like to learn more about our Occupational Therapy Programs, click this link. If you would like to make a gift to support our programs and services, including Occupational Therapy, click here.
