Before she retired, Sister Teresa of Benton, Kentucky taught elementary school for twenty years. And after that, she worked in two different positions in university administration before she moved to parish ministry at a small church in western Kentucky. But despite...

“Colors are brighter, more vibrant,” said Patti, a nurse from Overland Park, Kansas, about her vision after cornea transplantation. “The first thing I noticed was the colors. Everything was just so much brighter, the beautiful colors. Before I was seeing them, but...

Fred, from Springfield, Missouri, received a corneal transplant in November of 1970 before corneal donation and transplantation were as well-established as they are now. Saving Sight (known then as the Missouri Lions Eye Bank) and the Eye Bank Association of America...

Cathy from Bethalto, Illinois didn’t know she was suffering from a serious eye disease until she sought a consultation for Lasik surgery. The surgeon explained that the reason her contacts no longer fit and why she wasn’t a candidate for Lasik was because the shape of...

Betty, a 77-year-old retired businesswoman from St. Louis, suffered from a series of genetic eye problems for the last 40 years. She, her mother, her daughter, and her grandson all experienced early onset of cataracts in their mid- to late-thirties. Betty underwent...

Glaucoma is an eye disease most commonly associated with the elderly. High intraocular pressure, often occurring with advanced age, causes damage to the optic nerve and slowly limits peripheral vision. But the reality is that glaucoma affects people of all ages. In...

Tom suffers from Fuchs’ corneal dystrophy, a hereditary disease that causes fluid buildup as the cornea’s endothelial cells deteriorate, but he didn’t know that at first. “I thought I was having trouble with allergies and dry eyes – that I was getting older,” Tom...

Charlene, a cornea transplant recipient from De Soto, KS, calls her experience with transplantation a “journey.” With her sight diminishing, she worried about her position as a third grade teacher in a parochial grade school. “Teaching is what I have done,” she said,...

For years, Judy of Manhattan, Kan. struggled with vision loss due to Fuchs' dystrophy, a degenerative disease of the cornea. As the condition progressed, she had difficulties reading a phone book or seeing the license plate on the car in front of her. By the time her...

Losing your eyesight is incredibly devastating on its own. But to suffer from unbearable pain while your vision quickly vanishes is something many of us can’t imagine. Since she was a child, Elaine of East Alton, Ill. had problems with her eyesight. She underwent two...