Strength in Asking

Hadley

Strength in Asking

Nisha: The white cane communicated to the world that I was visually impaired because I still have a lot of the habits of a sighted person. And without that white cane, people look at me and say she doesn't need any help.

Marc: This is Hadley’s Insights and Sound Bites, where people facing vision loss share what has helped them cope and adjust.

Nisha: My name is Nisha Falcigno and I am someone who has been diagnosed with cone rod dystrophy. I was diagnosed with that about 30 years ago, and in the last 10 years it's definitely created a situation where I'm now legally blind and I use a cane and several other type tools to help me navigate living in New York City.

Unfortunately, I realized I couldn't drive anymore and I lived in suburban Connecticut, so that was a bit of an issue. I then decided that the best thing for me was to move to a more urban environment, one that I was already familiar with before my vision loss took effect. So I had a familiarity with the landscape. Once I moved to New York, there were so many more resources available to help me adjust to things.

And it's just a matter of, for instance, going into a grocery store and identifying yourself as visually impaired and asking for help in that store. And someone is kind enough to take me through the store and help me do things like shopping and all the other things you need to do when you can't really identify items on a shelf anymore.

First, I had to learn that I needed to use white cane and the white cane communicated to the world that I was visually impaired because I still have a lot of the habits of a sighted person. And without that white cane, people look at me and say she doesn't need any help. Why is she asking these questions? So, using the white cane was something I had to really get over some mental hurdles in using it because I then now communicated to the world, “okay, I have this visual impairment.”

And the beautiful thing about that is that I've had so many interactions with people who were basically strangers and it's given me that human connection that I might not have ever had had I not needed the help and asked for it. And it's given me a wonderful experience of meeting all these people that I never would've normally had the opportunity to meet.

And I realized at that point that asking for help and using the cane were really a source of courage and it wasn't a source of weakness. Once I figured that out, it changed my life.

Marc: You never know who might need to hear your story. If you’d like to share with us, just leave us a message on our Insights & Sound Bites voicemail. By calling, 847-512-4867. Or, you can use your smartphone or computer and email us a recording to [email protected].