WHEN he was just 11 Jerome Jackson lost his sight. For a while he was able to see blurred colours — until that changed. Now, he only sees light.

Jackson is the fifth individual in his family to experience such a loss. Prior to him, his grandmother, uncle, father and granduncle all went blind. And recently, one of his cousins lost sight in one of his eyes.

Still, as a boy growing up, Jackson said it never occurred to him that he could one day meet the same fate. In fact, he said he never regarded his father as being different, despite the fact that he was blind.

“My father was blind and he was very skilled because he had his farm. He would plant his stuff and all of that. One of the best things I ever see him do was when he climbed a breadfruit tree and one of the limbs tear off with him and him jump to another limb. I found that amazing at the time. Seeing my father do all of that at the time, I wasn’t worried. I was wearing glasses, but I didn’t know that I would go blind. I just knew that I would have to wear glasses for the rest of my life,” Jackson, 31, told the Jamaica Observer in an interview.

Knowing his family history, last year his biggest fear was that his six-year-old daughter, Jenellia Jackson, would become the sixth family member to lose vision, when an ophthalmologist said she was in need of tested glasses. And so, Jackson went on a hunt for $50,000 in donations so he could get her the special glasses that she needed.

“I like my glasses,” Jenellia said enthusiastically.

“I got the blue one. I love to clean my glasses. I clean it three times with water and the soap, and then I wipe it with tissue. And then it shines bright. And when I put it on, everything is bigger and everything is shiny. When I look now, I see everything… it makes me see better,” she told the Sunday Observer.

“She never leave the glasses, and that’s a good thing. The only time she doesn’t have it is when she’s going to her bed. And as she wake up, she ask for the glasses. When she got them she said everything was bigger, so I know that she actually needed the glasses for real,” added Jackson.

Jackson said he isn’t sure if she completely understands that he is blind or what that means.

“Sometimes she will just hand me stuff and her mother has to say ‘Your father cannot see.’ And then she would say stuff like ‘But daddy, you cannot see so how can you tell?’ So, I’m not sure she understands,” he said.

He added that it was suspected she had issues with her eyes one day when she was walking and looking down, instead of looking forward.

“She was just looking down and someone told me that I need to check out her eyes. I became so concerned that I took her to a doctor in Half-Way-Tree who said she’s nearsighted and needs glasses — and that’s how she got her first glasses,” Jackson said.

But even after Jenellia got glasses, he was still concerned.

“One day I was at the house and she said ‘Daddy, I can’t see.’ I held up a finger and asked her to tell me what it was and she was telling me something different. I decided to take her to another doctor because I didn’t want anything to happen. She has to change glasses every year until she’s eight, and her vision will get better while the years go by.

“I got the price for the glasses [$50,000] and I began to seek assistance to buy it. That’s how I was able to get it. I appreciate all the support and assistance that I got. May God bless all those who assisted me and may their baskets never go empty.”

It was like deja-vu for Jackson, who started wearing glasses at the age of eight after his grandmother realised that he had an “unusual” practice.

“My grandmother found out one time when I was playing video games. She realised that I was holding up the game too close to my eyes, and I was always sitting close to the television. That’s the only way I could see the television. So, she took me to a doctor in Papine and they said I need test glasses and I got the glasses,” he told the Sunday Observer.

But, unlike his daughter, he didn’t like his glasses and in retrospect, he believes it would’ve been wise to wear it religiously.

“People always called me ‘Steve Urkel’ and I never liked that name. I would always hide and I didn’t want to wear my glasses,” he said.

Jackson lost his sight three years later. He was travelling with his father when he was hit by a wave of pain.

“I followed my father to someone’s house, because we got the news that the person [had] just passed on. My father was blind and he knew the area, but I still followed him. And on the way, I was just seeing a world of redness. I was just seeing red and I was feeling some serious pain. I learned that behind my eyes was actually bleeding. My father called my brother and they took me to some doctors and they said my situation was bigger than them, so they gave me a letter to go to UHWI [University Hospital of the West Indies].

Jackson told the Sunday Observer that he spent five months in the hospital as doctors tried to ascertain what was happening with his eyes.

“They didn’t know what happened. Everything just looked red to me. They gave me medication for the pain. Then I remember one day my mother came to the hospital and asked why my eyes looked milky, and the doctor said ‘Oh, him have cataracts.’ They did a surgery and removed the cataract and I remember the doctor crying, because she really wanted me to get back my sight. But she realised that it didn’t work,” he recalled.

Doctors also found that Jackson had a scar behind his retina as a result of an infection, and prescribed medication.

“I didn’t know much about what they were talking about at the time because I was really young. When I came out of the hospital I remember that I could see the shadow of persons and the colour that persons were wearing. I could see the colour of cars, but I couldn’t make out a person’s face.”

Now, he only sees light.

“If you shine the light in my eyes, I can see it. I can lay down in my bed and see the light at the window and know that it is day. I went to [National] Chest Hospital and they said that I waited too long to treat it. Other doctors told me that technology has advanced, so maybe in the future something can work out for me. That gave me some hope. That’s why I try to prevent my daughter from going down that road.”

The main reason for his concern, he said, is the treatment of blind and visually impaired people.

“I am a massage therapist and I have my equipment, and other blind persons can work, but the private sector and some of these government entities are not giving us the chance. I see visually impaired persons with master’s degrees and they can’t get a job. I’m just appealing to persons out there and employers to just give us a chance. We do have responsibilities — we have bills to pay, we have rent to pay and we have food to buy. Sometimes we have our own parents to take care of. Give us a chance.”