It's cool that you're trying to help. Reaching out to strangers for help is never easy. Your wife is lucky to have you.

The boredom and the depression are real. I'd like to share my perspective on each of them. I don't know of a cure for either one, but in my case just knowing my wife understands helps me feel not so alone.

First, the depression. It's not just that we're grieving the loss of our eyesight, we're grieving the loss of our potential. We felt like we mattered when we were fully capable. We made things happen. We got shit done. We kept our companies profitable and we kept our families fed and we kept our cars washed and our lawns mowed. Our coworkers and customers and families depended on us. We were integral parts of our teams. We were proud because we made a difference. And then it stopped.

There comes a time in everybody's life when our best years are behind us. We plan on retiring once we're too old to be on top of our game, but we plan on doing it on our terms. Blindness doesn't wait for our terms. It resets our lives. We either retire or we continue working in a way that feels less like we're necessary and more like we're being pitied. Our inner monologue is screaming *Wait! I'm not finished!* But we are finished and accepting that is one of the hardest things I've ever done. We know it isn't our fault but that doesn't make it feel less real. We feel like we've let the people we care about down. They used to depend on us to fix their cars and stock their grocery store shelves and teach them algebra and run their machinery and now we can't. There's some guilt - I won't deny that. But it feels wrong to feel guilty because blindness wasn't our fault, so we end up feeling guilty for feeling guilty. But most of all there's just an ache to feel like we matter again.

On the boredom we experience - yes, there are ways to occupy our time. There are eBooks and podcasts and spin bikes to entertain us and educate us and exercise us. What's missing is *purpose.* We imagine having unlimited time on our hands would be a great thing until it happens, then we realize all this free time we have has no point. We don't think about it until it happens, but there's a purpose to how we spend our free time when we're fully capable. We entertain ourselves to recharge our batteries. We educate ourselves in the hopes that one day we'll be able to put our newfound knowledge to use. We exercise to keep ourselves strong and able to meet whatever unexpected demands life sends our way. But when we lose our sight there doesn't seem to be a point to recharging our batteries. There aren't many situations in our foreseeable future that require our recently acquired knowledge, and staying healthy seems like a cruel joke for someone taking a permanent sick day from work.

If I could offer any advice I guess it would be this - we're still who we were. We've lost something important and our lives need to be restructured around our blindness but other than that we don't want to be treated any differently than we were treated before. Our abilities may be diminished but our passions and desires and dreams haven't changed. Please recognize this. Your wife is still the girl you fell in love with. Going blind changes everything but it changes nothing, too.

Good luck to you. I wish the best possible lives for each of you.

What kinds of things did she like to do before? Has she started getting any rehabilitation to learn/relearn new skills? That could help her find new hobbies as well.

Thank you all I just want to add how much your support means to me personally. I want to add the doctors haven't been much help they have been holding out to see if progress can be made ie getting sight back I think that was just to keep her spirits up. I plan on going to our local center for the blind to figure more out. Thank you all so much.

You've gotten plenty of good advice from others. I would just add that while entertainment is great, it's no replacement for feeling useful, and like a contributing member of the family/community/society. In short, she needs to get training, and she needs some good role-models to show her that while life may have changed drastically, it certainly isn't over. Most people, including we blind people, seriously underestimate what is possible in spite of blindness.

I lost my sight within a week when I was 14 years old and they were never able to restore it. It is a really tough thing to adjust to that's for sure.

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What sort of things is she interested in? What were her hobbies before she lost her sight?

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If this will be a long term thing, it's essential she gets assigned to an O and M instructor, tech instructor, and an independent living skills instructor.

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If she could start learning how to use the built in screen reader on Windows, the Mac, iPad, or iPhone if you have one, then she could read e books, read articles, use reddit, facebook, twitter, start a blog, listen to things on Youtube... Netflix and many of the other streaming services have an audio description mode you can enable... there are audio games, there are board games that are adapted so that blind and sighted people can play together... You have Bookshare and BARD which is a free service offered by the Library of Congress. They offer audio books and Braille books as well as magazines either through the mail, via their web site, or, via their iOS app. maybe she could take up an instrument if music interests her... There are plenty of free music lesson courses for instruments including piano and guitar etc. Also, the Hadley school offers free adult ed courses that are totally accessible to blind people if she'd be interested in studying something...

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I'm not legally blind or anything, but I've got pretty bad vision without glasses (no reading street signs, only crisp within 1 ft of me).

Anyway, I've long been a fan of old time radio and find it's a wonderful source of entertainment when you don't want to stare at a screen (I also get awful migraines that make me light sensitive). There's endless YouTube videos that provide them.

Many shows/movies on Netflix also have an "audio description" audio option as well. They're great at just acting like a narrator and I've listened to them at times and sometimes the narrator clues me into details I hadn't visually caught.

*Cool thing old radio did was radio show versions of movies. They're abridged but do a far better job at painting a picture.

I hope I'm not speaking out of turn since I'm no expert and new here.

Does she like to read? There are apps for audio books and e-books but also, YouTube has audio books on it as well. I'm not sure what kind of games she's into I know you said video games she would be able to play Dungeons & Dragons if that's something she's interested in.

Thank you to all that said audio descriptive movies and on a side note the cleavland library group every movie dvd and blue ray we checked so far has them. So she got to check out alot. Thank you all so much.

Documentaries.

Find organizations that serve the blind. They can recommend experts and programs, including therapy. Depression is common in people who've had sight and go blind in middle age. It's a major adjustment.