Blindness is a Spectrum: Serenity’s Story

Three years ago, Serenity’s life changed overnight. She woke up on the morning of her high school graduation with blurry vision. After a week of waiting, she went to the eye doctor who found the pressure in her eyes to be dangerously high. She was sent to the emergency room, where doctors performed a lumbar puncture and discovered the pressure in the fluid surrounding her brain was three times the normal amount.

The diagnosis was intracranial hypertension which is a condition that had already damaged her optic nerves, leaving her legally blind. What followed was a grueling stretch of medical care: a double eye surgery to relieve pressure on her optic nerves and a full brain surgery to place a shunt that now drains fluid from her head to her abdomen. She couldn’t open her eyes for a week and a half after the first surgery. She remembers her cats sitting by the bedroom door the entire time, waiting for her.

“It’s only been about three years since everything happened,” Serenity said. “I’m trying my best to learn how to have grace about it.”

That grace doesn’t come easily. Serenity has to field the same well-meaning questions about her eyesight again and again: So, it’s pitch black? You can’t see anything at all? Her answer is always the same: blindness is a spectrum.

She’s just like any other 21-year-old. She likes going out with friends, doing her makeup, drawing, and dancing at the club. “It’s like parting the Red Sea,” she said, laughing about the reaction her cane gets in crowded, dark spaces. “I think it’s fun.”

Serenity credits NewView Oklahoma with much of the confidence she’s built since her diagnosis. She began learning cane travel at NewView Oklahoma’s Tulsa office, building her skills over several months.

After a break she found her way back to continue sharpening her skills at NewView’s Keys to Work program, both last year and this year. She even discovered assistive technology, something she hadn’t been exposed to before, including several tools now on her wish list.

“They’re the ones who inspire me to have grace,” Serenity said of the people she’s met through Keys to Work and NewView. “They give you resources and ideas you didn’t think you’d need as a visually impaired or legally blind person, but it’s all really helpful and needed.”

Serenity’s plans are still taking shape. She’s set her sights on returning to school for social work, drawn toward helping survivors of abuse, inspired in part by her grandmother’s decades of casework for the Cherokee Nation. For now, she’s focused on moving forward.

If you or someone you love is navigating vision loss, NewView Oklahoma is here to help. Learn more about our programs and services and take the first step toward independence.