StemCell Therapy

STORY:

When Claire Bertram was starting out as an adult, she did what most people do. She found a career to match her strengths and steer clear of her weaknesses.

Part of that job search was making sure to find a line of work that required the least reliance upon eyesight. Bertram is visually impaired. She was born with no vision in her left eye, and in her right eye she suffers from microphthalmia, a rare condition in which one eyeball is unusually small, creating "very limited version," as Bertram puts it.

During a recent interview at the Oasis Day Spa in Dobbs Ferry, New York, Bertram told Reuters she came up with the idea of becoming a massage therapist from someone else who was brainstorming career choices. But unlike other massage therapists who can employ multiple senses to carry out their work, Bertram must operate without sight.

Bertram downplayed both the challenge and the novelty of working through her disability.

She said she's been aided by a lifetime of "honing" her other senses including feeling and hearing.

The image, however, of a massage therapist working without vision is a striking one, so much so Bertram has had to encounter skeptics during her decade-long career.

"No one's said anything to me personally, like, 'I don't want to work with you.' A lot of people, they're not like that," she recalled. "They're going to tell someone else so they don't have to be put in that awkward situation."

"It's not like we're stupid," she said.

Skeptics among her clients have sought an escape through the front desk.

"Are there customers that come in and may at some time, because of Claire's physical limitations, have trepidation? Yes, that does happen," said spa owner Bruce Schoenberg. "And our answer to them is, 'go in, experience the massage, and if you're not happy at the end of the day, let us know. We'll give you a discount.' But that has never happened."

And the ones who stay, Schoenberg said, are "ashamed in some respects that they had these prejudices against somebody that was sight-impaired and they realize that it was something they shouldn't have been concerned about."

Other massage therapists with vision impairment have written about their ability to thrive on industry websites like "Massage Today" and "Massage Magazine." And the field has long been the province for the visually impaired in several Asian countries.

For Bertram, it's understandable why some might find her success remarkable.

But she shies away from the label.

"Lots of people, things happen to them on a daily basis, some people go blind," she says. "You can cope. You can learn how to live a regular life."

(Production by: Dan Fastenberg and Hussein al Waaile.)

See original here:
'You can cope' - visually impaired massage therapist - Yahoo News UK

This entry was posted on November 29, 2019 at 6:46 pm and is filed under Eye Sight & Vision. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed. |