Macular Degeneration by Paul Wallis, £12.99, swattbooks.co.uk
Author Paul Wallis is an optometrist based in Dorchester, Dorset. He started his career working at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London, where he came across several patients with age-related macular degeneration (AMD) in his Low Vision Aid (LVA) clinic but was unable to help them see as they once did. Frustrated, he sought a way to fix this problem. He moved to a rural practice in Dorset and decided to enter the Optician Awards, taking home the Vision for Life award in 2013, 17 years after winning the Independent Practice of the Year Award. Consequently, this win sowed the initial seeds for this book, as he felt compelled to find a way to help those with deteriorating vision due to AMD.
There is a companion audio version of this book available also created by Wallis, which is aimed more at the person with AMD and talks about issues specifically with them in mind.
Macular Degeneration starts in chapter one with Wallis’ explanation as to why he decided to write the book. ‘This book is my atonement,’ he says, for failing to help a 90-year-old woman with AMD during a LVA clinic at Moorfields Eye Hospital. ‘What I failed to do was give her hope for the future,’ he continues. ‘I now know how to give that hope. That is what you too can give to the one you love by reading this book.’
Wallis scatters personal stories of patients he has seen over the years throughout the book to remind readers why he wants to help and how he can go about doing so. By choosing to go on to work in a practice rather than a hospital, he often knew the patients before any major sight problems developed. This allowed him to gain the necessary experience over the years to find the best way to help each patient and their family and friends through the publication of this book.
Chapter nine consists of a letter from Wallis to visually impaired people. He suggests that the person reading the book – the one trying to help their loved one with AMD – reads it out loud to attempt to ease the pain and distress that the AMD sufferer is going through. By writing the letter as if directly speaking to the patient, he tries to explain what is happening to them in a calm, succinct and professional manner, as well as trying to get across the fact that they are not alone in this. He hopes that by reading this letter, people can all come together to work through this and come up with solutions to everyday tasks suddenly made difficult by AMD.
Wallis uses making a cup of tea as an example. He advises sitting down with someone and discussing with them different ways of making a hot beverage, including heating up cold water in the microwave and then adding either a tea bag, tea leaves or coffee to the liquid in a container they can drink out of. Afterwards, these ideas can be tested out until people find a method that works for them. Wallis admits this is a ‘back to basics exercise’ but is very much a process of relearning the world one step at a time.
He continues the letter with other potential ways people could try to regain some of their independence and feel more confident in themselves again, such as using a white cane in public places, so people will understand any issues that arise. Someone struggling with change at a checkout in a shop could be visually impaired, and the cane will alert those around them to this fact.
Overall, Wallis hopes that the publication of this book will open up more debates and discussions about visual impairment and what role optometrists can play in assisting and treating patients with this condition. He says that the key to helping patients is to give them hope for the future, which he aims to do throughout Macular Degeneration by fully explaining what has happened to them, what is happening to them now and what will happen in the future.