Visual impairment slows teen’s strides
Lamar Green has an overwhelming desire to attain a sound education, but his wish remains elusive due to his visual impairment, which has affected him since infancy.
Green, an 18-year-old student at the Enid Bennett High School, struggles to see the blackboard while in class, which makes it difficult for him to get the grades he desires.
“Sometimes I feel crossed and ask why this thing [has to happen to me]. I need to have an education so that I can grow up and help my mother,” the teen told
THE STAR.
The youngster said that due to his challenges he often relies on the use of his cellphone camera to capture images from the board. However, even that poses a challenge.
“When I take the picture of the board on my phone, and sometimes when I zoom it up, when my eyes running water, I can’t see it. The teacher would tell me to just put the head on the desk,” Green said.
His mother, Marian Palmer, said the issue of Green’s impairment has long been a barrier to his learning. She recalled that when he was a student at the primary school level he was referred to specialists to get his eyes tested.
“The left eye has a scar over it, so it is totally gone, he can only see like shadows from it. The right one he can see a little from it, but once the letters are bold, he can see them,” said Palmer, a 38-yearold single parent from Mickleton district in Linstead.
An examination done at the University Hospital of the West Indies revealed that Green has a condition called Aniridia, which is characterised by the partial or complete absence of the iris. The recommended treatment involves bilateral corneal grafts with limbal stem cell transplant. The procedure, which is done at the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute in Miami, Florida, comes at a staggering cost US$5,000 (approximately J$783,200) and an additional US$ 10,000 (J$1,566,500) for medication.
Palmer said she does not have the first dime and worries for her son’s future.
“If he does not do this surgery, it’s going to get worse someday, someday along the line because it’s more and more severe,” Palmer said
She said the magnitude of Green’s predicament eclipses their capacity to manage.
“Since his eyes started getting worse, sometimes he keeps himself in a lonely zone, not even wanting to play or go anywhere out without me,” Marian disclosed, highlighting the emotional toll on both mother and son.
As Marian grapples with the weight of her son’s condition and the financial strain it imposes, she voices her despair, “I don’t know where to start from, honestly, because I’m not working, but I have tried to use my nursing certificate to get work and nothing. You know when you just feel like a fish out of water, you feel like there is no one cares. You feel like you just want to give up on life.”