032 Hope Changes Shape with Kevin Lowe

In this episode of inSight Out, host Matthew Reeves talks with Kevin Lowe, a podcaster, public speaker, and former travel agency owner from the Daytona Beach area of Florida, about losing his sight at seventeen. After years of migraines, stalled growth, and glasses that never fully corrected his vision, Kevin was diagnosed in 2003 with a plum-sized, non-cancerous brain tumor pressing on his optic nerve and wrapped around his pituitary gland. Surgery on October 28th, 2003 was reported to his family as a total success, but when Kevin fully woke up three days later he could not see the blinking light on a pulse oximeter. Doctors had put the risk of blindness at one percent, and to this day no one can say why it happened.

Kevin describes the survival-mode months that followed: praying every night to see his family again, mourning a future built around sight, and holding onto hope for a medical fix. He also tells the story of deciding to graduate with his class, learning braille, a screen reader, and cane travel from teachers at his grandmother's house, and inventing his own strategies, like tracing math equations with his finger so he could picture them. A rough stretch at community college, a close friendship with his Nana, and a job readiness program at the Center for the Visually Impaired lead to internships at an AM radio station and a travel agency.

Matthew and Kevin then talk about entrepreneurship as an underdiscussed path for blind and low vision people, including the seven years Kevin spent running Better Days Travel from home with JAWS and a laptop, and how the pandemic erased what was set to be his best year in a single week. His sister's suggestion led to a podcast, launched in May 2020 as The Lowdown on Life and Travel, which opened the door to public speaking and to conversations with people he never would have met otherwise. The conversation closes on Kevin's belief that how we respond matters more than what happens to us, and on Matthew's observation that Kevin's hope never went away. It transformed from waiting to be rescued into creating something of his own.

Reach out to Kevin at podcast@gritgraceinspiration.com. Learn more about his podcast at https://gritgraceinspiration.com/.

Topics Covered: sudden vision loss, brain tumor surgery, adjusting to blindness as a teenager, hospital homebound teachers, braille and cane training, family support, entrepreneurship and blindness, starting a podcast, hope, living in the present.

ABOUT THE PODCAST

inSight Out is your podcast home for living well with vision loss. Host Matthew Reeves (LPC CRC NCC) is a legally-blind psychotherapist and rehabilitation counselor specializing in helping people thrive while living with disability. Matthew is licensed in Georgia and is a nationally certified rehabilitation counselor.

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