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How inventing a product to help restaurant goers with aging eyesight led her to discovering Age-Related Macular Degeneration and inspired her to give back.

“I didn’t know about Macular Degeneration until I invented this product.”

A few years ago, as she was approaching retirement, Connie Inukai found herself facing a challenge many do as they get older – reading small print in dimly lit restaurants. Instead of letting it go, she decided to find a solution. She set out to create a fun and useful product for restaurant goers who didn’t want to bring their smart phones to dinner.

The result is Tip-n-Split, a pocket sized magnifier, light, and calculator rolled into one.

Learning about AMD and Giving Back

In her journey to create Tip-n-Split and get it into the hands of people with diminishing eyesight, Connie started hearing about Macular Degeneration. Over and over it came up as she was meeting people at expos.

“So many people told me I could really use this, or my mom really needs this, she has Macular Degeneration. So many people seemed to have this, but I didn’t know anything about it, so I looked it up.”

Once Connie realized how many people were suffering from AMD, she wanted to make a contribution beyond the product. She reached out to us and let us know she wanted to give 10% of the proceeds from online sales to the cause of Macular Degeneration.

“At this stage in my life I want to start giving back.”

And she didn’t stop there. She sent us 12 Tip-n-Splits to give away as gifts. If you’d like to receive a Tip-n-Split for free, tell us about your Macular Degeneration solutions (or frustrating lack thereof) for reading the menu in dimly lit restaurants. We’ll send a Tip-n-Split to the first 12 commenters! Be sure to include your email so we can get in touch!

You can find out more about Connie and Tip-n-Split at www.tipandsplit.com.

**UPDATE: (December 12) Connie was so moved by your comments she sent us 12 more Tip-n-Splits to give away for a total of 24!

On a sunny day back in May, a team of people came together to cook for, photograph, and design a calendar with delicious foods good for eye health.

Some key people from the team that developed the AMDF cookbook, Eat Right for Your Sight, came together to create the Feast for the Eyes calendar. Jennifer Trainer Thompson developed the recipes, guided by the groundbreaking research of Johanna M. Seddon, MD, ScM, one of America’s leading experts in the field of age-related macular degeneration.

Before the photo shoot got under way, Jennifer Trainer Thompson was on deck for prep and to help organize and oversee cooking of the recipes she had developed.

Catrine Kelty (food stylist) reviews the order of recipes with Jody Fijal (food preparation). This was one of the few moments Jody wasn’t furiously cooking!

Jody and Susan tag-teaming clean-up between dishes.

Remnants from the Oysters on the Half Shell recipe (don’t worry, somebody ate them) which contains lutein and zeaxanthin, both good for eye health.

Christian Goulette, photography assistant, making adjustments to the camera before a shot.

Catrine arranges a dish for Joe Keller, photographer, while Christian makes tech adjustments in the background.

The team reviews how the shot looks on screen. Take a shot, review, make adjustments, rinse and repeat until it’s calendar worthy!

Blueberries for the Spinach Watercress Salad, plates awaiting the Carrot Soufflé Dessert, and in the background, empty oyster shells. All foods good for eye health!

The last step in the day’s process… in an adjacent room, Hans Teensma (middle) takes the approved photos and puts together the design of the calendar while Chip Ghoehring (background), AMDF founder and president, looks on to offer feedback along with AMDF’s Paul Gariepy (foreground).

Ok, the actual last step. Clean your plate!

The 2017 Feast for the Eyes Calendar is available in our shop or, through November [EDIT: now through December!], if you donate $100 or more to AMDF, we’ll send you the calendar as a gift [click here to donate]. Donations support AMDF in meeting the needs of those affected by age-related macular degeneration through education, supporting research and new technologies, and offering hope and resources to live, and even thrive, with the disease.

A Missionary’s Approach to AMD

Polly Brown takes an unusual approach to Age-related Macular Degeneration.  It isn’t an easy one, and she knows it isn’t for everyone. She believes it’s her job — perhaps even her right — to “be thankful in all circumstances.” That phrase is from the tail end of a letter from the Christian missionary Paul to people living in Thessalonica in the first century. Paul himself is thought to have suffered from vision problems — so much so that he mentions in another letter in the Bible that he knows his friends would give him their own eyes if they could. Whatever Paul’s story, Polly Brown takes his suggestion as — well — a bit of divine instruction.

Brown was diagnosed with Age-related Macular Degeneration in her left eye in 2006, after coming out of cataract surgery. She was 78. “It was kind of a shock because my first cataract surgery, in the right eye, was perfect,” she said recently in an interview. “I could see clearly. But the surgery for the left eye was funny. After the surgery there was this big mushroom-shaped floater that didn’t go away. That afternoon I was sent to a retinal specialist.”

Brown has been undergoing treatments for AMD in her good eye, to preserve her vision. The treatments are most recently at the Flaum Eye Institute at the University of Rochester in N.Y., near where she and her husband Ralph live. Every six weeks she receives an  injection of Avastin, the formula which inhibits the growth of abnormal blood vessels behind the eye, slowing or even stopping the progress of “wet” AMD.

Brown used to dread injections. “They’re not that painful — because the eye is numb,” she said. “But there’s some discomfort, with the eye clamped open. And for a few hours afterward, I’m crawling around with my eye all irritated and watering. Plus, dilated. I prefer afternoon appointments. At least then I don’t lose the whole day. I can go home and go to bed with a cold washcloth on my eye.”

The Browns were missionaries overseas since they were in their early 20s, having only moved to back to the United States in early retirement. Given their work, they know the Bible backward and forward. And Polly was well aware of that obscure bit about gratitude. At first —

“Be thankful for everything? Well, who can do that, all the time?” she said. “But I decided that, instead of dreading the monthly appointments, I was going to be thankful that there’s a treatment, and a specialist, and this research. Plus, I have insurance to pay for it. I go in with that attitude. You know, last time I went, the aftermath was not as bad.”

Another obviously good thing is that, due to the treatments, Brown has plenty of sight in that right eye. She can even read, especially under a bright light. She was thoroughly enjoying a P.G. Wodehouse novel when we interviewed her — one in a big stack of fiction, biographies, and Bible study books that has been a standard mix her whole life. At church she uses Kindle and large-print Bibles.

At 85, Brown does not see well enough to drive. But Ralph can drive, so they are well set to run errands or to see their five grown children (and seventeen grandchildren and six great-grandchildren … ). They moved to Rochester, NY, two years ago to live with one of their sons and his wife.

“While we’re still able to be independent, we’re well set if the time comes when we need more help,” Brown says. Even now their daughter-in-law often invites them for dinner, “especially on injection days.” (Although, when they stay home on those days, Ralph cooks. This is a new skill for him, Polly Brown notes wryly. “He has become very good at opening cans of beef stew.”)