Shortly before she was declared legally blind in 1995, Betty Lord decided to drive the grandchildren to the mall.
She still had her license (though she wouldn’t for long) and no one else was around to offer a ride. So Lord got behind the wheel, and, with help from the kids, navigated between Powder Springs and Marietta.
“They would tell me when I was coming up to a stoplight,” said Lord, 81. “My grandson, he was holding his hand out the window, shouting, ‘Get out of the way! Blind woman coming!’ “
She realizes now this was sort of a reckless, Al Pacino-style stunt, but "I was, like, stubborn. I didn't want to say I can't do this."
Like para-Olympian McClain Hermes, Lord wouldn't give up. Holding on to hope, she tried a variety of surgeries, including laser surgery and a vitrectomy. They didn't bring back her eyesight. Diabetic retinopathy reduced her vision to zero in her right eye; she had only sensations of light and dark in her left eye.
She had to quit her job as a home care nurse. She learned to use a cane, and studied braille. Today she lives alone in a senior complex in Carrollton. She cooks for herself, using puffy paint to identify cans of green beans and corn. She’s very independent, but there are some things she’d like to see before she dies.
In particular she'd like to see the faces of her family. She has six children, seven grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren, between the ages of 1 and 13. Her eyesight was already gone by the time the oldest great-grand was born. She has held her great-grandchildren, kissed them, fed them, but she has never seen them.
Until now.
On Wednesday afternoon Betty Lord will put on a pair of electronic eyeglasses created by a Canadian research company called eSight. Six of her great-grands will be in the room at the Hilton Atlanta, four travelling from Oklahoma and two more from South Carolina.
What’s it going to be like? “I think it’s going to be wonderful!” said Lord, who’s had a chance to try the glasses once before. “I’d like to be able to do it right now. Like, yesterday!”
The glasses are the result of about 10 years of research by an engineer from Ottawa named Conrad Lewis. Both of his sisters were diagnosed with Stargardt’s disease, an early-onset form of macular degeneration, when they were in their 20s. Lewis brainstormed ways to use contemporary high-speed computers to help the girls improve their vision.
Esight uses a high definition camera and two miniature LED screens, mounted on the inside of a pair of lightweight goggles, so that they sit about a half-inch from the eyes. The camera has the capacity to zoom in or out; it can switch from near to far vision on the fly, so that it can focus on a book several inches away, or on a scene across the street.
The goggles are connected by a cord to a palm-sized computer running image-processing software. The user clips the computer and battery pack to a belt, or carries them in a satchel.
The device takes some getting used to. Lord tried it for the first time May 18. Her grandson Jacob Gromovsky, 36, who lived with her as a child, and drove her around when he was a teenager, took her to downtown Atlanta to meet with representatives of the company.
“I was just blown away, as the kids say,” said Lord. Gromovsky stood across the room, holding up cards with numbers on them, and “I could read those numbers,” she said. “I thought, ‘I can’t believe this.’” Then she looked at Gromovsky. “Dang, you’ve got a big beard,” she said. She’d never seen that before.
“It was just me who took her last time,” said Gromovsky, of Mableton. “I didn’t want to get everybody’s expectations pumped up. But after it worked, I almost exploded; my heart melted.”
This time he’s bringing a crowd for the 3:30 p.m. tryout, including his brother Joshua, his cousin Aubrey Cade, and their children. They’re meeting at the Hilton Atlanta, in downtown Atlanta.
At $15,000, the device is not cheap. Gromovsky, who works on the electrical systems of cars, has started a GoFundMe page to help his grandmother pay for the glasses. His friends and family have already chipped in about $3,000.
The device is not yet covered by many insurance plans, said eSight spokesman Chad Battman, and though it's been featured by such television stars as Rachael Ray and Dr. Oz, "a lot of doctors don't even know about it." Clinical trials are planned in the U.S. this year he said.
Gromovsky thinks the price is steep but understandable: “I’m sure they’re trying to turn a profit like everybody else. I’m glad they created something that will make my grandmother’s quality of life better.”
Lord said the harness that holds the goggles on your head “will mess up your hairdo in a heartbeat,” but otherwise she’s all in favor of the idea. “That is a lot of money,” she said. “Jacob says he’s got friends, and we can raise that money.”
“Hopefully I’ll be able to see my crochet needle again.”
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