Hello, my name is Cathleen Pyper, Cathy to my friends. In 1996 I began to suffer minor changes in my vision. I am a diabetic and found out that I had Diabetic Retinopathy. Somehow, I thought I would escape this, although now I can't imagine why I thought that.
I had many surgeries and fought the good fight, as they say. Unfortunately, I lost the battle and in fifteen months I had no vision. Every time I experienced some change in my vision I would say to myself, "well, this is ok, I can adjust to this as long as it doesn't get any worse." I can't even tell you how many times I did that; eventually I was left to adjust to no vision. Was it the end of the world? Of course not, but it seemed like it at the time.
I was 43 years old and a single mom. I of course lost my job because I was a supervisor of a teller line at a major bank. You have to be able to see the money to be accurate.
I had no idea of what to do. My physician was wonderful and he was also upset at the failure to save my sight. We all cried. I still left his office without an idea of where to get help.
I called the local chapter of a national organization for the blind and they never returned any of my phone calls. I couldn't see to read the phone book so my mother took over that job. Eventually we found a state agency to provide some basic training so to speak.
I entered the Center for Blindness and Low vision in February of 1998. There I learned to use a computer with adaptive software, how to be mobile in the world outside of my apartment, cook and all the things you need to learn to have a fulfilling life.
While there I met a lot of wonderful people, fellow students and instructors. After hearing the stories of some of my new friends I realized I was pretty lucky. Their experiences all seemed worse to me I also met a new student whose name is Peter Pyper. We became very good friends and with enough prodding on my part we fell in love and married in October of 1999. My guide dog Packard walked me down the aisle while wearing a tuxedo. He was a little bored with the ceremony and fell asleep, but not until he ate his flower.
Once my life had settled down I realized that I now had the experience and knowledge to help others find the help they needed. All of us at the Center for Blindness and Low vision eventually found the resources but it took a long time. You could get a piece of information here and maybe hear about another organization that did something else. There just didn't seem to be comprehensive resources available.
So Peter and I along with our friends, sighted and visually impaired have put such an organization together. We believe our resource list, support group and mentoring system to be the best. We will always work to make it the best it can be.