Meet Shelby | Episode #3
Episode 3
Meet Shelby
Shelby was born with both FEVR and ROP and has been blind most of her life. She is now a 26 year old college graduate, living with her parents and actively applying for jobs. In this episode she tells her story of both challenges and successes.
Show notes:
Shelby references the Colorado Center for the Blind
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DR. PATRICK DROSTE: We would like to welcome the world to our Through Our Eyes podcast, brought to you by the Pediatric Retinal Research Foundation. We are a community of visually impaired young adults, talking about what it's like to navigate through high school, through college, through career development, and beyond. We tap into our experiences and cover a wide range of topics, providing you with actionable tips and strategies that may be able to help you negotiate these same obstacles. My name is Dr. Patrick Droste. I am a pediatric ophthalmologist practicing in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I've been taking care of visually impaired children, young adults, and now older adults, and it's been a real experience watching them negotiate the different challenges in life. I frequently refer to this as the fish ladder of visual challenges starting out at a low level, and each time jumping up the ladder a little bit, swimming around a little bit, learning some new skills to get up to the next. And we have three outstanding, outstanding, young adults, that have done this, all three come from different backgrounds of visual disability and have different stories, and we've asked them all to talk to us about three things. One, a little bit about themselves in her background. Two, what were the greatest challenges they had in their formative years? Three, what do they consider their greatest accomplishments during his time, and lastly, how are they preparing for the future?
SHELBY: Hello, my name is Shelby Craig. I'm 26 years old. I am a recent graduate of Converse College in Spartanburg, South Carolina. I have been blind all my life. I was actually born with a genetic mutation that caused several different issues, the top among them being FEVR and Retinopathy of Prematurity. I was born two pounds, 14 ounces, and the doctors did not think that I was going to survive. Once I was born, I was whisked away with my brother to NICU and kept there for about six weeks. As soon as I was brought home from the hospital, the doctors realized that there was something wrong with my eyes. They went in and did several corrective surgeries, but my eyes didn't respond, which led to them thinking it was genetic. And the doctor that was working with my parents and me gave my parents a decision to make as to where I would like to go to have my eyes treated, and the doctor immediately recommended Michael Trese in Michigan, and I've been going to him sent to this day since I was about eight weeks old. I was fortunate because I came into a very loving family who supported me, they still support me to this day, and they have always wanted me to be self-sufficient and independent.
My parents, they never wanted me to use blindness as an excuse to not be able to do the things that sighted people normally do. This was the philosophy that they had for me all their lives, starting from elementary school, they put a cane in my hand when I was two and a half years old, and I still use it to this day. Navigating through the challenges presented by the educational system isn't always easy. When I was in middle school, I was given a braille teacher who did not know braille. As a result of that, my parents decided to pack all three of us up and move us from where we lived all our lives to a new home in Mount Pleasant, where I attended Wando High School for five years.
After high school, I moved on to the Colorado Center for the Blind, where I received vocational training and education in independent living skills such as cooking, cleaning, laundry, and many other skills. While I was there it gave me a sense of independence that I don't think I would have found anywhere else. See, when I was growing up, I was always the only blind kid on the block. It wasn't always easy to relate to my peers. It still isn't at times, because as blind people, we are having to conform ourselves in order to live in the sighted world. And in many senses, we have to prove ourselves not only to the sighted but also to the blind. We are ambassadors in that sense, and as ambassadors of the blind, it is our job to conquer all of the challenges that this world presents in order to show society that our blindness does not have to define us, rather it is a characteristic that we have and not a definition.
To this day, I'm actively seeking employment, currently trying to establish a job that will provide me with enough exponential income in order to live independently and support myself. Not only that, but my goal is also to support any family members that I decide to settle down with, and hopefully provide a way to make society brighter for all blind individuals. I'm really happy to be a part of this podcast and present possible solutions to parents who are blind or sighted as well as to blind students, solutions for dealing with all of the multiple challenges that are out there because they are very real and the road will not always be easy. But they can be overcome.
I don't want to take up too much time here, but I do want to end by saying this, some people move on to be astronauts, who explore the depths of space, some go on to inspire the world by playing sports, others go on to be famous authors and writers of history and biographies or autobiographies that keep the legacy alive that talks about many different backgrounds and walks of life. Ladies and Gentlemen, I am none of these people, however, it is my goal to show the world that any challenge great or small can be overcome with support and with help from our peers and those around us, the only thing that stands in your way of getting past those challenges is you.
Now, granted, there are things that as blind people, we can't really do driving, being an example, because I have a feeling that a lot of people might panic if they saw a blind person driving a car on the street until the self-driving cars come out that is. But as long as society is willing to help us, we can be willing to help them and return. Thank you so much for your time, and I look forward to being on this podcast.
DR. PATRICK DROSTE: The podcast is called Through Our Eyes. Make sure to like and follow our Discord channel, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, and let us know if you have any questions or have a topic you would like us to cover. We have some interesting topics coming up in the very near future, and they're basically broken down into technology, gaining independence, college, and career development. We're going to be talking about learning technical skills, and discussing different high and low technical devices like Versa, Perkins Brailler, Braille Compass Trekker, etc. And then we're going to work on gaining independence, on home repair, taking care of things in the house, mobility, cooking, and the challenges of daily life. For the young people who are trying to pursue careers in college, as we heard from Breyanna, some of the challenges there, navigating inaccessible textbooks, and software, getting help from disability resources, and so forth. Then we want to work on choosing a job that's right for you and your skills, using community services, and choosing how to get involved in the community. We have tremendous things planned, and we hope you tune in again for our next podcast. This is Dr. Droste saying goodnight to all of you and on behalf of our staff at the PRRF, thank you.