Welcome to strangers from KCW and Radiotopia.

I'm Leotau.

In today's episode is the second installment in a series about Adrian Wagner.

If you haven't heard the first one, I suggest you press pause and go check it out.

It's called Adrian's Race.

In short, Adrian is 25 and suffers from Starkgarts, a form of macular degeneration,

which means that he's losing his eyesight. He was diagnosed when he was 12, and he was told

that his eyesight would get gradually worse, and that there was a distinct possibility he would

eventually lose all sight.

On the last installment, we heard the story of how Adrian has managed that so far in his life,

and we left him at a sort of crossroads where he was evaluating the cost-benefit

of pride versus humility in his attitude towards his condition. Up to that point,

Adrian had made very few concessions to his disease, and he took great pride in doing things the way

a seeing person would whenever he possibly could, to the point of taking jobs like bicycle pizza

delivery in New York City and construction work,

where he simply would not tell his employers about his vision problems and try to hide them.

But when you've repeatedly been hit by cars while delivering pizza,

or you've knocked down the wrong wall at the construction gig,

because the reality is that you can't see very much.

When does the cost of trying to act like you don't have a problem exceed the benefit of

not giving into it?

We came to that question at the very end of the last episode, and we left it open.

...