Michelle Boyd is a certified Vocational Trainer for the visually impaired at The Lighthouse for the Blind Rehabilitative Services. She is legally blind and uses adaptive equipment and low vision aids to not only work on computers, but to also teach her students how to prepare to enter the workforce. It's a career path she never envisioned as a little girl who saw things a little differently than others.
"Dad, look up there at all those stars!"
That's what nine year-old Michelle said to her dad one particular hot and sunny East Texas summer day while tending to the garden in their Jacksonville home. Worried she'd gotten too much sun, her father told her to go inside. Seeing 'stars' or 'spots' was common to Michelle and this particular day she remembers the spots as more intense than before, but not being able to communicate this to her father, "After all, didn't everyone see the stars or spots, too?"
Michelle never complained as she struggled to read in school as her father worked as many as three jobs sometimes to care for her and seven other siblings plus a mother half paralyzed from a massive stroke. Her father died of cancer while she was still in school.
Throughout her education and inability to see well enough to read, she never once saw an eye doctor.
"I suffered my whole life with trying to memorize everything."
Despite her difficulties, Michelle went on to graduate from high school and then college at Dallas Baptist University. It was only after working at an investment firm outside of a Dallas suburb that Michelle finally seek medical care for the condition that had plagued her since childhood. She says she was driving home when she knew something was wrong with her vision.
"Everything went blurry. It was late and dark and I kept saying 'If I can just get home I'll go to the doctor tomorrow!'
After an eye exam the next day the doctor referred her to a specialist who diagnosed her with Stargardts disease which is a genetic form of juvenile macular degeneration. Most patients are diagnosed with the disease before the age of 20 through an eye exam and Michelle who is now legally blind says that could have extended her eyesight as well as uncovered why she struggled so hard in school.
Sadly Michelle's story is one that will continue today across Smith County as long as our neighbors around us cannot afford eye exams.
Through Saving Sight: PATH and The Lighthouse provide vision for life for those who need eye exams, eye glasses or those like Michelle who use adaptive equipment to empower them to live independently.
"I have lost some sight. Not my vision!"
