How Many Ways Can You Go Blind?

Posted on 22/10/2026 by Grumpa Joe

When I asked my friend and fellow Lion that question, Optometrist Dr. Smith replied, “Probably 500, but I’m guessing it’s more like 1000.” That gives us a huge opportunity to serve the blind. As the blind-and-deaf Helen Keller challenged us in 1926 to become Knights of the Blind, she gave us something to work on. Back then, she was so far ahead of us in this topic that it was scary.  Thankfully, the Lions Club International decided to adopt blindness as a pillar of service. We have been striving to help blind people ever since.

Statistically, there are over 12 million people over the age of 40 in America who are classified with visual impairment. Out of that 12 million, over 1 million are legally blind.

Lions have been supportive since Helen Keller presented her challenge to us. For instance, we invented guide dogs and the white cane.

The World Health Organization (WHO) cites five causes of vision impairment and blindness:

1. refractive errors

2. cataract

3. diabetic retinopathy

4. glaucoma

5. age-related macular degeneration

Many more reasons are apparent, like accidents and disease, but there are too many to discuss now.

I am proposing a new way to serve the blind to Lions Clubs. Many newly diagnosed blind people are above the age of sixty. When they are struck with the diagnosis, they are devastated as they would be if they heard they had cancer. Older people have trouble adapting to the condition. The loss of independence is devastating. The loss of mobility combined with losing independence makes living stressful. Yet, people adapt, but often with a significant loss of personal dignity.

About thirty years ago, a young couple from the south suburbs of Chicago, both blind, decided to do something positive with their lives and formed a support group they called OASIS. They worked hard to turn their handicap into something positive. They figured they could help people get back into life even with the lemon they were handed. They met with a handful of vision-impaired individuals and led them in prayer and discussions about handling hard things. Kim and Joe used their personal experiences as positive motivation to encourage others to do the same: lead everyday life as well as possible without sight.

Five years ago, the Frankfort Lions became aware of OASIS through our neighboring Mokena Lions Club. Together, we joined them by sending money to help them with their work. Since then, Kim and Joe Kuster, the originators of OASIS, have retired and moved to Tennessee to be near their grandchildren. This left the two clubs with a more significant opportunity to keep the organization going and self-supportive. It has been a full year since the Kusters left, and we are still in business and are growing in numbers.

We have learned that people with visual impairment, especially older ones, enjoy the company of people with the same affinity. They feel comfortable with each other, knowing they are not standing out as being different.

OASIS brings together a community of people in similar situations. They come with someone who can drive them and sit around a table with people they can talk to and share experiences with. A facilitator leads them in prayer and motivates them with ways to overcome hardships. Often, they lead the group to share how they handle situations.  The leader introduces them to items that make life easier, like large print calendars, talking clocks, and magnifiers. Every meeting is different from the one before. Lions serve a snack and kibitz with the attendees. They clean up and assist with a game if one is played. A favorite is bingo.

I am telling you this because OASIS is an instrumental and helpful organization within this community. I am sure you also have many people within your realm who could benefit from a vision-impaired support group. We would be happy to help you start a chapter within your club. If you wish to help but are not ambitious enough to begin your own OASIS chapter, you may want to assist OASIS in several ways.  Our most urgent need is for volunteer drivers who can adopt a visually impaired person to take them to and from OASIS meetings once each month. Our second largest need is money to run the meetings and expand services.

 You can donate to OASIS (a not-for-profit 501c3 organization) by clicking the OASIS website link below.

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Losing It To AI=AU

Posted on 05/09/2025 by Grumpa Joe

After posting several articles about positivity I have to break my record with a rant. This week I had a chain of events that sent me into deep depression. Thursday, Lovely and I left the house at 8:00 am to make it in time for her doctors’s visit at 9:30, we arrived at 10:00 a.m. Traffic going into downtown Chicago was dense. We checked in and waited for Lovely to be called. They called her at ten-thirty. I sat in the exterior waiting area reading. She eventually made it into the doctor’s office at 12:30 p.m. Luckily, I had a very boring book to keep me occupied. I knew there was trouble when Lovely exited with the doctor at her side. Evidently, the doctor could not assess her condition because the blood test results never made it to her. Lovely had her blood drawn three weeks ahead of the appointment. The story gets better. The doctor ordered another test for Lovely. This test could be done right next door at Stroger Hospital which is physically connected to Cook County Health. It sounded like a solid plan, we would make the appointment with the lab before we left to go home. We walked five hundred feet North then turned West and walked another five hundred feet passing clinic after clinic to the hospital main entrance where we got an elevator to the second floor. We turned left (by this time I lost my sense of direction) and walked the beige colored hallway passing clinic after clinic until reaching Clinic-M, Radiology. Except, the scheduler for Clinic-M was not available. We waited for another half an hour before an attendant appeared and gave us a number to call. Frustrated and beaten we decided to leave. Finally, we were on our way home. We arrived at our door at 3:30 p.m.

After a snack and a brief rest, I dialed the number to reach Clinic-M to make the appointment. The phone rang off the hook without an answer, and I gave up.

Today, Lovely asked me to take her to Quest Diagnostics, a national testing service, to find the missing blood test. The lobby was a baren room with a two people waiting, a standing computer screen, and a door. I began pumping our information into the computer when the door opened and a tech appeared. Lovely immediately corralled the attendant asked if she could give her the results of her blood test. ” We don’t deal in results here all we do is take blood. You have to go online.” Well, that triggered my blood to boil.

Lovely and I sat in the car as I dialed the number they gave us to call for results. After ringing several times a male robot answered and began spouting numbers to dial for specific situations. None of them sounded like what we needed, so I pushed the last number he listed. Another male robot answered and started the same spiel. The situations he rolled off sounded very much like the last ones. I pushed number eight this time and waited for something to happen. A third robot replied and began telling me to push button numbers assigned to my situation, except there was no button for getting test results. By this time fifteen minutes had passed and the car was getting hot so I ended the game. It was time for me to bite the bullet and use their website.

At my desk, I went directly to the Quest Diagnostics website and learned that I must set up an account to get any information. I did. I finally pushed the button to verify my information. A note appeared that I needed to get a code sent via text to complete the job. I did. The code came slowly, but it finally arrived.

I punched in the code, and another note page arrived with a paragraph of malarky about needing more information. This time, they wanted pictures of a photo ID and a passport. All I had to do was take a picture of the QR code at the corner of the screen. I took the pictures, but began wondering how they would move from my phone into the database on my computer. I hit enter on the phone and the same program I used on the desk top appeared on my phone. They wanted all the information that I just pumped into my computer into their website except now they wanted it to come through my phone. If I owned a gun I would have shot the desk top computer and my phone too.

There was a hidden clue at the bottom of the website page. It was a line of Chinese. I maintain that all of this Artificial Intelligence (AI) should be renamed Artificial Un-Intelligence. I’m taking a break for a beer.

The most stupid person I ever met was a genius compared to these AI robots.

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Some Questions Don’t Get Answered

Posted on 20/12/2024 by Grumpa Joe

My wife, Lovely, has a penchant for needing to know the root causes of things that are not right. Yesterday, I took her to one of the best hospitals in the country to take a test that would forever answer the question of what is causing the noise in her ear, and her issues with balance. This test, the name of which I can’t pronounce or spell was the last one available in the doctor’s bag of tricks that could produce an answer. The test took ninety minutes to complete. She got her answer. It is a nerve in the ear that has been damaged and it is the one that connects the brain to control balance.

“What is the fix?”

“There is none.”

“How did the nerve get damaged?”

“We don’t know.”

“Will the constant noise in my ear ever go away?”

“No.”

“Is there a drug that I can use to control the problem?

“Yes, but only a neurologist can prescribe it.”

This answer ends a quest that began in January 2024, with multiple visits to seek answers. I see it as only the beginning to find the drug that works, but she won’t want to live with the side effects.

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Seeing More Clearly

Posted on 18/12/2024 by Grumpa Joe

This is a bad day and time to write for this blog. Lovely and I just returned from a shopping spree at the grocery store. It may just be my imagination, but the prices of everything keep going higher and higher. I wasn’t long ago that we were amazed that the bill was up to a hundred dollars. Today, we topped out at $199.61. Lovely continues to feel like it is her fault for being extravagant. I reminded her that she came with a short list, but I piled too much stuff into the basket myself. “Maybe when Trump becomes president he will get the prices down,” she said. I went into old guy story mode and told her about the last time we had inflation like this was in the nineteen eighties when Jimmy Carter was president. At that time the prices never went down and they won’t this time either. The damage has been done. The government led by his excellency Joe Biden has spent money he didn’t have and now we are paying for it with inflation.

To get my mind off the predicament, I took a back road home through a section of Frankfort to see a new house being built on a five-acre tract, and the one house takes up half of it. Clearly, this family does not have money issues. The owner happens to be related to the local concrete delivery service. They are new to the community, and the man of the house is already running for Mayor. The mansion is at least twelve thousand square feet in size. The family has five older daughters and I figure they must need a lot of closet space.

Yesterday, I finally arrived at the eye doctor’s office on the correct day and time. I was ushered into one of the exam rooms and waited while a young lady put eye drops into my left eye to enable her to measure eye pressure, then another drop to dilate the eye for the doctor. I played my phone game while I waited. Eventually, I was ushered into the laser lab and directed to sit in a specific chair. I resumed my game. The doctor entered, and I was shocked. I have grandchildren that are older than this guy. “You’ve had this procedure performed on the right eye in July, so you know how it goes right?” “Yes I do, let’s get it over with.”

The last doctor who did this was now retired and happily spending his fortune doing nothing. The doctor sat opposite me and told me to rest my chin on the rest and move my forehead into the brace. “Look at the red light.” I happily looked at the tiny LED bulb suspended above his left ear. The procedure began. Pop, pop, pop—he was killing this unwanted membrane between my lens and good vision. After about ten pops, he would say, “Blink,” and then go back to pop, pop, pop, pop. I could hear him moving the laser from spot to spot and pulling the trigger at each point. It couldn’t have taken longer than five minutes for him to finish. I looked at him and said, “why did I get the impression that you were playing a video game?” “Yes,” he said, “it is a lot like a video game, I’ll see you in a month.” He ushered me to the exit.

After it was over, I opened my left eye and saw nothing but blackness. Is this what it feels like to be blind? I wondered. When I reached the exit, my vision was as good as when I had walked in. Twenty-four hours later, my left eye is seeing sharp and crisp words. Now, I can get some new glasses to correct my astigmatism.

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Posted on 17/12/2024 by Grumpa Joe

Yesterday, I drove twelve miles to an eye appointment that didn’t exist. I was so anxious about getting my left eye laser-treated that I made a stupid mistake. It was strange that the receptionist kept asking me for more information. Eventually, she looked up at me, somewhat sad-eyed, and said, “Your appointment is tomorrow, not today.”

I was in shock! How could I let that happen? I looked at the calendar on my phone, and sure enough, it was showing the 17th, not the 16th. When I arrived home, I searched for the appointment card, and it verified the 17th as well. I went to my office and sulked. Now, I am in waiting mode again, anxiously waiting to have the cataract removed from the plastic lens implanted twelve years ago.

At the time, I did not notice how much my eyes had been affected by the cataracts. The Doc kept telling me I should have them removed, and I kept ignoring him. Eventually, I agreed and had both eyes done. I was amazed at how much my vision improved. I went around bragging that now, I could see like an eagle.

Lately, the vision in my left eye has been blurry. I tested myself by closing my left eye when reading and could see distinctive sharp lettering. When I closed my right eye, all I could see with the left was a blurry melt of print. Being a Lion, and being that the Lion’s long-standing priority has been dedicated to vision, I feel it is my duty to get my eye fixed.

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