Sara DiRenzo was born and raised in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where she currently lives with her husband of many years. She’s also a mom to three grown children and grandma to seven under the age of five. “When they are all together, we call it our goat rodeo,” Sara jokes. “But I love every minute of it. I cherish my family. They are what’s most important to me.”
Sara worked as an optometric technician for many years, which gave her an increased awareness when she started noticing vision changes. She was ultimately diagnosed with pigmentary maculopathy, a degenerative eye disease that results in, among other things, vision distortion, blind spots, and a loss of depth perception.
Sara’s older sister has also been diagnosed with this disease, and her vision has deteriorated significantly more.
Changing vision has meant that Sara has needed to adjust her surroundings and approaches to tasks to continue to do what she loves to do. She’s an avid gardener, cook, and book lover. “Lighting is our biggest changes in the house right now.” They’ve switched up canned lights in the kitchen for LEDs, which are much brighter.
She is also learning to use technology to help her. “That’s where Hadley comes in,” Sara exclaims. “I just did a random search. And I’m so happy to have found you guys!”
Sara loves that Hadley “gives pointers along the way” and has checked out several workshops and listened to many of our podcasts and discussion groups, too.
She was specifically pleased to see Hadley’s tutorials on using a white cane. Sara bought herself a cane but has been having trouble getting a local resource to come out and help her learn how best to use it. For now, she mainly uses it as an identification cane, alerting others that she doesn’t see as well as she used to.
And while adjusting to not driving hasn’t been easy, she’s grateful that one of her daughters lives very close, her husband is super supportive, and good friends continue to include her. “I work really hard not to just sit back and have a pity party. I don’t want to become isolated, even though I understand how easy it would be to fall into that habit,” Sara remarks.
Grandbaby number eight is due in a few months, and Sara is excited and a bit nervous, too. Whenever a daughter has given birth, Sara has spent several weeks helping the new family adjust. She plans to do the same this time. But as her vision loss has resulted in balance problems, she plans on helping more with her daughter’s two older kids rather than the newborn. Of course, that’s still a big source of support. “I will be there to help my daughter with her new baby for sure. But it’s going to look different this time,” Sara says.
Sara is a Hadley advisor and recently shared her opinions with us on how she experiences our discussion groups. Insights like Sara’s will help us continue to improve our offerings to better serve those facing vision challenges into the future.
Thank you, Sara!