Translator: Robert Tucker Reviewer: Hélène Vernet
I have a prosthetic eye.
I can't see 3D, and I can't be a fighter pilot.
But we all see many things.
We see our friends; we see our families;
we see that there is never any parking here at USF;
(Laughter)
but what others don't see
are the many struggles that our peers have to face.
Eyes are our tools for seeing the world,
but what happens if one or both of these eyes disappear?
I was five years old when I was playing pirate with my grandpa
when my mom realized something was wrong.
My grandpa placed an eyepatch over what we now know as my good eye,
and I immediately ripped it off because at five,
I couldn't comprehend that the sight in my eye had gone away.
This was the first moment in my parents' life
that my world as we knew it would changed for ever.
My parents are high school sweethearts.
And when I say that, I literally mean married-in-high-school sweethearts.
My mom was 18 years old when she learned she was pregnant with me.
She had also just lost a parent for the second time around.
Losing both of her parents to unnatural causes like alcohol abuse,
had a profound effect on her life.
She thought about other options,
but adoption and termination never crossed her mind.
Deciding on how to tell her family they had a brat
was also a cause for concern.
So, my dad proposed his senior year of high school,
and they ended up getting married before they had me.
It definitely was not easy for them being young and fresh out of high school.
My mom's dream of going to college in another state had gone away.
Her chances of playing college volleyball ended.
And her whole world changed in April 1996.
But as the due date came near, my mom had a chart that she had to use
to check off how many times a day she felt me move.
If she did not feel me moved 10 times within a twelve-hour period,
she was instructed to call the doctor.
So, on the night of April 13, she realized I had hardly moved all day.
The doctor at the emergency number told her to come in to the ER,
and she was admitted.
But as the night grew on, the doctors realized I was in danger of dying,
so they decided to schedule an emergency C-section for early the next morning.
Once I was born, the doctors realized I had lost a significant amount of blood,
so they needed to give me blood transfusions.
After about a week staying in the ICU, I was finally able to go home.
Once I was home, my parents struggled
to figure out life as a teenager with an infant in the house.
But growing up, I lived a wonderful childhood
even though my parents were growing up themselves.
As a toddler, I played with Barbie dolls, had unconditional love and support,
and I got the occasional bumps and bruises.
But I was five and my parents were 23, when our whole world changed:
cancer.
The day I graduated from preschool, the doctor said it was cancer -
as if my parents didn't have it rough enough already -
retinoblastoma, a rare cancerous tumor that affects the retina of the eye.
Ten days later, I had to go into immediate enucleation
which is a surgical procedure to remove the eye.
This was the only way to prevent the cancer from spreading.
Halfway through my surgery, the cancer had spread so far through the optic nerve,
which is the nerve that leads to the brain.
But, luckily, the cancer was contained to just my eye,
and now I'm happy and blessed to be in remission,
living life to the fullest, overcoming all limitations
that people would've thought was impossible to do because of my disability.
But I've been very positive about having one eye since the beginning.
When my parents told me that my eye was sick,
we were sitting at dinner, and I said,
"Well, why don't I just take it out right here with a fork?"
(Laughter)
After the surgery, I had no eye in my socket for about two months.
So then you need to put a patch over it,
which I happily bedazzled with sparkles and stickers.
I know now you're probably wondering,
and if you said my left eye is the fake eye, then you're correct.
I'm sorry, but this entire side of the room I cannot see.
My depth perception cuts off about here,
Everyone gets so excited to see Star Wars in 3D,
but personally I've never seen the effects of it,
although I do have favorite things about being blind in one eye.
If I ever need contact lenses,
technically I only need one contact which means half the price for me.
And, are you annoying me, please stand on my left side
because I can't see, so it's again not even there.
(Laughter)
Today, I'm so grateful. I can drive, I can read and I can write.
My teachers always trusted me
because they know I can't see the person next to me,
so obviously I was never cheating.
But at times I hated my prosthetic eye,
and I still do.
I was constantly bullied, stared at, laughed at, running into poles,
and was always missing class for oncology checkups and new fittings for my eye.
I even have to wear glasses
because if some idiot wants to throw a pencil across the room,
with my luck, it will land straight into my good eye
causing me to be 100% blind instead of 50% blind.
But with all of this, being blind in one eye
is actually the best thing that's ever happened to me.
So take a moment to look around the room.
Realize that everyone has a story, and everyone has a purpose.
Someone has failed 99 times but succeeded on the 100th time.
That's perseverance.
It's also easy to say that in light of my disability,
I've persevered every single day,
which is the continued effort to do or achieve something
despite difficulties, failures or oppositions.
I'm so much more than my prosthetic eye, my disability in having cancer.
I'm a person that is committed to achieving and exceeding my goals.
That's helped me to become the person I am today.
So, take a moment to look around the room
because everyone has a story, and everyone has a purpose.
I was a freshman 15 years old in high school,
when I found out what having a purpose means.
I was at a new school making new friends and starting a new chapter of my life.
It didn't take long before the word got out
that I happen to be a cancer survivor playing volley with no depth perception.
I didn't even know what depth perception was
until my teammates put on eye patches.
I was constantly running into the net. So that's depth perception?
I still don't get it.
As you can imagine,
playing volleyball with only half of my vision in one eye is very difficult.
The ball is coming on my left side,
which means I'm totally blind to the court,
but I don't know any different.
Everyone tries to explain to me that your two eyes come to a focal point,
but I still have no idea what that means.
In September 2010, my coach came up to me, and she said,
"Hey, let's start a fundraiser in honor of your story.
We'll call it Dig Pink."
I was touched and inspired that my peers, teachers and coaches,
would want to raise money to bring awareness about my disability.
So, I set a goal,
that by my senior year of high school, I would raise $5,000 to cancer research.
But by the time I was 18, I had donated over $18,000.
(Cheers) (Applause)
Thank you.
I wanted to succeed in making a difference
because volleyball taught me to be a confident young woman.
I'm not successful because I survived cancer;
I'm successful because I'm determined.
Being in remission hasn't stopped me from saying my life has been lived,
it has only pushed me to keep going.
Today,
I'm so grateful I can drive, I can read, I can write.
I drive myself to doctor appointments.
I attend this great university.
And I'm blessed to be a part of this sisterhood
that embraces me like family.
There's no such thing as being limited.
You're only limited when you choose to restrict yourself
instead of taking on a challenge
and proving that you can overcome anything you set your mind to.
So, cancer does not define who I am.
There's more to life than a diagnosis.
For the people that have a pity party for the overwhelmed college student,
the newly survived cancer patient,
or the mom that is taking time off work because she just had a baby,
why?
There's nothing you can do to change the circumstances in your life.
Why should I still be upset over it?
I'd never choose to take back having cancer
because it's helped me to become the person I am today.
I am so much more than my disability.
I'm able to inspire people around me
and have such a great sense of humor with it
because I don't have a choice but to deal with it.
So I have two options:
I can sit here, and I can cry
and think about all the things I could be doing with two eyes,
like reducing the anxiety I have when I drive with other people in my car,
or get better handwriting.
Or I can embrace it since there's absolutely nothing I can do to change it.
In order to feel like I have successfully lived my life,
I needed to make sure I had a purpose.
It does not stop with it, I battled cancer, I won, I peaked.
Time for a normal life?
Nope, it is time for me to create positive change
and embrace my disability.
(Coughing) Sorry.
it's time for me to create positive change and embrace my disability.
This is not the time to beg to the clouds and ask,
"Why me? Why did this happen to me? Why can't I see?"
and "Why do I struggle over the most basic things in life
like using scissors, every single day?"
But life is hard, not just for me but for all of us.
So, while I'll not take this opportunity to be an advocate for something,
if I don't have a choice but to be happy, confident and excited for life,
then so can anyone else.
It is the will from within to not be afraid,
to take that risk of failing, and to persevere.
I may have had some restrictions in life,
but, in some ways, it made me want to excel
and prove that I could do anything.
Adaptation is everything.
The changes in our life may be by choice,
but we must be able to adapt whether we are prepared or not.
It is your choice to adapt in a positive or negative way.
Life doesn't come the way we always expect it to.
I will never have two eyes.
I'll continue to have doctor appointments every six months for the rest of my life,
and I have to live life with an uncomfortable fake eye.
But I will never let this define who I am
because having one eye means seeing a new perspective.
You may think you haven't found your purpose yet, and that's okay.
It's scary to step out of your comfort zone
and even scarier to think of your life containing no ends and no boundaries.
And on my relentless road, we wouldn't be afraid to say what we feel,
to take that risk of failing and to persevere,
even if we feel like someone or something is holding us back.
For example,
you don't have depth perception, so you can't play sports;
and you are totally blind in your left eye,
so you don't have a full range of vision.
So, as I mentioned earlier, you need two eyes to see 3D,
and you need two eyes to be a fighter pilot.
But, you don't need any eyes to be happy, confident, positive and excited for life.
What happened to me growing up is not the focus of my life,
it's how I chose to handle it.
I chose to handle these unfortunate situations,
like getting diagnosed with cancer and having a fake eye,
with tenacity.
I also understand that there are people out there who have it worse.
Always remember there's someone out there
that has it worse than you do.
I may be blind in one eye, but there are people blind in both eyes.
I may have had cancer, but I survived.
So whilst on the side that nobody has the right
to tell someone how to deal with their deepest pain,
I've realized that even the most traumatic experience of my life
comes with having a voice, and with that privilege of having a voice,
comes the responsibility of me using it.
And that's the least I owed to all my fellow cancer survivors,
angels, and every single one of you who have listened to me in this room.
So now, I challenge all of you to embrace your endeavors and hurdles in life.
Your eyesight is more than just your vision:
it's all about your perspective and your perception
because we all view our life through a different lens.
Thank you.
(Cheers) (Applause)