After Your Macular Degeneration Diagnosis, Adapting Your House
Being diagnosed with macular degeneration can feel like a blow. By now the diagnosis is common enough that people know what it means, but still uncommon enough to evoke fear. Will you lose your vision immediately? When you do, will you lose your independence?
Receiving a diagnosis of macular degeneration shouldn't be your signal to give up on life. Rather, use the time before the disease progresses to prepare yourself and your home for your future needs.
What the Diagnosis Means
Macular degeneration is a condition that affects nearly 11 million Americans in some form. In its "dry" form, it is largely benign but serves as a warning that a more advanced stage of the disease is coming. At any time, dry macular degeneration can turn into "wet," which means there is blood leaking from the blood vessels in the eye that feed the "macula," the part of the retina responsible for your close vision.
Being diagnosed with dry or wet macular degeneration often means that, in the future, your vision, particularly the central vision you use for everyday tasks like driving, cooking, and reading, will become impaired.
Even after being diagnosed with the condition, many people still enjoy years of sufficient vision to remain independent. However, as the disease progresses, many people are forced to depend more upon their peripheral vision, and many progress to the status of being legally blind, even when they can still see colors and shapes.
Start to Prepare Your Home After Your Diagnosis
Macular degeneration is a progressive disease. It will not take your vision immediately, and that will give you time to prepare yourself and your home. If your goal is to age in place, now is the best time to start to adapt your home to your low-vision needs.
Although you can work with home-care consultants to make your home more safe and accessible as you age, you can also make your assessment and plans. The first thing to do is a walk-through of your home, room by room, and make a note of changes you can make to take charge of your future living situation.
Assessing Your Home, Room by Room
You can certainly assess your own home for possible safety issues, but it is often helpful to enlist a family member, caregiver, or friend to help you see issues that you might miss. Set aside an hour, and walk through each room in your home (not forgetting the garage or your parking situation). Take notes and write down goals for each room.
The types of things you should include:
Accessibility: Are walkways clear of tripping hazards? Are your doorways wide enough to navigate with a cane, walker, or wheelchair? Are there stairs you need to worry about navigating?
Surfaces: How can you streamline items on them? How can you make them easier to use and clean? Is there clutter in your home that you can take this opportunity to remove?
Storage spaces: How can you make cabinets easier to use, with your most frequently used cooking tools and ingredients front and center? Do you know what is in all your drawers and cabinets?
Visual cues needed: Look at all of your most-used appliances and think carefully about how you use them. Can a friend or loved one put labels on them or use markers to help you see when they are on or off, at high heat or low (to name just a few options). Is anything you own difficult to use, like remote controls?
Need for adaptive tools: How is the lighting in your kitchen and bathroom? Do you have any low-vision tools on hand, like magnifying lamps or large-button (or voice-programmable) phones? Do you have a microwave (as they can often be safer to use than stoves)? Do you own a large-print pillbox that relatives can help you fill when needed?
Start Now to Make Changes That Will Be Necessary Later
The overall goal of starting to adapt your living space as soon as you get your macular degeneration diagnosis is to give you back a feeling of control. By setting things up to be easier to see and use, you can practice in your slightly changed environment while you can still see, which will make it easier to adapt as your vision worsens.
Being diagnosed with macular degeneration can make you feel like you are about to lose your independence. Nothing could be further from the truth. By making changes now, you can position yourself to age in place, even with a compromised vision, for many years to come.
Comfort Keepers Can Help
Comfort Keepers has been a leading provider of in-home care in Logansport and the surrounding area for many years. We have helped many local seniors remain independent at home, even when dealing with a health ailment. We can help you too. Give our team a call today.
