Sandra Oliver

I'm doing 100K Your Way

Hi all my close family and friends, 

As you know my two eldest children, Christian and Georgia have a reasonably rare syndrome called Usher Syndrome which started with gross motor delay in early years(balance issues), hearing loss at birth and vision loss . They are both now legally blind with less than 10 degrees of vision, they are aged 15 and 17, but also deal with profound hearing loss. They fortunately wear Cochlear implants through lots of hard work and many years of early intervention to understand sounds and learn to hear and speak. They too had slow gross motor development growing up. These days there are troubles are with their sight, ie. eldest not being able to get drivers licence and my second born having this come to fruition too in a couple of years, like all their friends. It is a very hard transition period where peers are achieving something very special and mine can't due to vision loss.  Seeing in low light and continuing mainstream school with noise levels, too with their hearing loss has always posed issues as my kids are so independent not wanting to accept help in recent years even since starting high school. The help has been there but they have dismissed it. I love my kids' perseverance, their individuality. They are destined for amazing things despite their hearing and vision loss. Deafblindness will not define them nor will Usher Syndrome. xx I also must give credit to my eldest son who has continued to succeed academically over the years and is achieving in the top few students in the entire high school year 12.

I’m taking on the 100K Your Way challenge! We often take exercise for granted, but for someone who is blind or has low vision a walk or a run isn’t always easy. That’s why, to help raise funds to support people who are blind or have low vision stay active and independent, I'll be running or walking 100K over the month of April. 

Please DONATE to my page now by clicking the DONATE button. Together, we can help raise funds to support people who are blind or have low vision keep independently mobile. 

Thanks so much for your support.