{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"#BlindTok Podcasts","title":"From the Mound to Here: #BlindTok E:11","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":4026,"description":"In Episode 11 of #BlindTok, Murray Elbourne and Tammy Jackson sit down with special guest [Janelle's last name], a former collegiate softball pitcher and occupational therapist living with Stargardt's disease, for a conversation that moves between heartbreak and hard-won clarity in a way that only this community seems to pull off. Janelle takes the hosts back to the moment everything changed: a routine eye appointment, six yellow spots on her retinas, a diagnosis delivered at speed, and a drive home that ended with Google and a whole lot of fear. She walks through the four months that took her from 20/40 vision to legally blind, a well-intentioned trip to Arizona that made things significantly worse thanks to a treatment she had no reason to question, and the surreal experience of returning to her college campus for senior year knowing she couldn't drive anymore and figuring out, one neighbor at a time, how to keep going anyway.\nWhat makes this episode land isn't just the story, it's the way Janelle tells it, with a warmth and self-awareness that makes even the toughest moments feel like something you can sit with. She talks about laying in center field staring at clouds, quietly counting down the sights she wasn't ready to lose, balancing a psychology degree with therapy sessions about fears she hadn't yet lived through, and eventually building a life that includes a husband of 14 years who tried to sell her on the word \"chauffeur\" and somehow got away with it. From the softball diamond to occupational therapy school to running five businesses, Janelle's story is a portrait of a person who kept making decisions under uncertainty and figuring out the rest on the fly, which turns out to be exactly what blindness and low vision sometimes demand.","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/fXZKr9WpTcjUzDQvROVWF1RvvqUOPcJQjqu4vLOu2gU/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9hODg2/OGU4MWE4ZTliYzg4/ZjRiNWY2MTdmMTVl/NzI4OS5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}