"Several years ago, an optometrist ambushed me during a routine exam: 'Do you know you have retinitis pigmentosa?'"

"... I had no idea what she was talking about. She followed with another question: 'Are you night blind?' Indeed, I was. I’ve never been able to see in the dark; it’d been something of a running joke among family and friends since I was a kid. 'Clumsy,' we called it.... I had a progressive eye disease that eventually results in blindness. There’s no cure."

Writes Jon Gingerich in "How I wrote my first novel while going blind – and kept it a secret" (The Guardian).

"I sold my novel last year. In a decision that was fully on-brand, I didn’t tell my publisher I’d lost my vision.... [M]y worst days are the ones when I realize I’m left to work with pieces of myself, that I’ve become unmoored from the human experience in some fundamental way. But... [w]e are a collection of small losses, and each of them have a distinct weight. We have no idea what others are walking around with, the weight they’re carrying on their shoulders.... [C]ommitting to the cane was the most terrifying development yet, because it meant my secret was out.... I felt relief that no one batted an eye. Why would they, anyway?"

"We have no idea what others are walking around with"... unless they use a cane or its equivalent (and we, ourselves, have the vision to see it).