oh, the life of me.

Inter­webz — I’ve seen you do some pretty amaz­ing things, and now I’m count­ing on you once again. I’m talk­ing help of epic, life-changing pro­por­tions — com­pletely Love Harder style. Can you han­dle that?

Okay, here’s my story — I’ve been known to get per­sonal with you guys, and I don’t tend to hide any­thing. But the one thing that you may not know, is that my hus­band is deaf, and los­ing his vision. It’s some­thing that I’ve never really thought to men­tion, as I’m accus­tomed to it. How­ever, after see­ing a few doc­tors over the past cou­ple of years we’ve recently got­ten a diag­no­sis. My hus­band has Retini­tis pig­men­tosa (RP), as a result of a con­di­tion called Usher’s Syn­drome. Usher Syn­drome is an inher­ited con­di­tion char­ac­ter­ized by hear­ing impair­ment and pro­gres­sive vision loss. And RP is a degen­er­a­tive eye dis­ease, which crip­ples night vision and reduces visual abil­ity in the periph­ery until the suf­ferer essen­tially has “tun­nel vision.” Many peo­ple with RP even­tu­ally become legally blind.

What that means is that not only is my hus­band over 60% deaf, but he’s also los­ing his vision. Close your eyes for a sec­ond, and imag­ine that. Imag­ine what it’s like to have two lit­tle chil­dren and know that most likely you won’t be able to watch them grow up, at least in any nor­mal sense of “watch­ing” them. Things like sport­ing events, grad­u­a­tions, wed­dings. Sure some vision will be there, but not like you or I know. It’s a hor­ri­ble dread­ful feel­ing, espe­cially know­ing that it’s out of his con­trol, or my con­trol. There’s noth­ing I can do to make that go away. My hus­band doesn’t it show it much, but the loss of vision that he already has upsets him. And truth­fully, it upsets me. It break my heart that he may never be able to see our chil­dren do things that every father should have the right to see. It’s depress­ing, and it’s some­thing that I tuck away…I keep it hid­den to mostly every­body how it hurts, and how it makes me angry. I need to be the strong one for us, but some­times it’s hard.

But here’s where you come in. On May 8th, our fam­ily busi­ness is host­ing the first ever fundraiser in honor of the Foun­da­tion Fight­ing Blind­ness, and my hus­band. I real­ize that we’re all from dif­fer­ent areas, and don’t expect any­one to show up. But what am I hop­ing for is a dona­tion, even if it’s $0.50. I hate (and I mean HATE) ask­ing for money or any­thing of the sort, but this time I have to. There isn’t enough gov­ern­ment fund­ing out there for research, so your con­tri­bu­tion (even the small­est of one) is fight­ing reti­nal degen­er­a­tive dis­eases through crit­i­cal research.

Inter­webz, I’m reach­ing out. It’s not in my nature, and this is some­thing extremely hard for me to do.…but I need you. I need help in giv­ing my hus­band a chance at a bet­ter future with our chil­dren. Pass this along, even if you can’t afford to donate anything…help me reach as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble & raise as much money for research. Help my fam­ily have a brighter future.

For more infor­ma­tion, links, and how/where to donate — CLICK HERE.