Your story shows me there is a great need for education regarding children’s vision. Thank you, for making a difference in my life! You’re no longer alone, Judy. You inspire me to keep fighting for what’s best for the kids. God bless you, dear friend…

Thank you, Dolores, for sharing your trials of living with an undetected vision problem. I felt your pain. I wish I could give you a great big hug right now…

May you be comforted in knowing your struggles were not in vain. God is going to turn those scars into stars. Your story is going to help a lot of children and people.

I am more determined than ever, Blu, to continue fighting for what’s best and right…

Thanks for making a difference in my life!

… failing all through school has haunted me all my life… no one picked up on my vision problem .. not the teachers not my parents. I remember not being able to find my classrooms because I could not see the numbers on the doors… so I would hide in the girls bathrooms ( they were easy to find ) until the next class. it was a nightmare for me. Because the teachers became frustrated with me they would make me sit in the rear of the room .. ( out of sight ..out of mind) thats how it felt. At the end of class, we were told to copy our assignments from the Blackboard… I could not see the assignments on the blackboard… so I copied nothing. I was ignored .. the teachers NEVER bothered with me. I failed miserably.

I have learned more on my computer..thank goodness to Spell Check …. then I did in school. I just know a few things … emails… internet … nothing complicated… I could never do office work on my computer … my daughter has taught me a lot … her name is Barbara. She was a high honor student in high school as were my 2 sons .. I named my daughter after a girl in my class who was a A+ student and she was very popular… so I named my daughter after her .. in hopes SHE would be smart.

I would be honored to be your friend Janet .

As you can see I have not written any Petitions … writing is very difficult for me. And my reading abilitys are very limited…and slow. I do not know much about punctuation so I add alot of these … … ….

Thank you Janet,
Dolores / Blu (from Care2)

In response to… (IAO)…Not Cost -effective ?
What did it cost me to live a life of being uneducated..and a failure ALL through school..Sometimes I dream of what I could have been (I wanted to be a scientist) had I had my eyes examined early.My eyes were so bad …I thought everyone was like me … I was a child …what did I know.?
You tell me IAO…
…you tell me.

May you be an inspiration to other legislators seeking the eye exam law across the country!

My personal thanks to you for all of your hard work and all those involved with the Vision First Foundation. You certainly got it right in response to the Tribune article and I want to commend you for your comments.

As chief sponsor of the bill, I personally know the challenges that we faced regarding this legislation and it was your determination that made it happen.

Congratulations!!!!!

And as far as having kids’ eyes examined by the Pediatric Family Physician, aren’t these the same folks, who along with the testers in school, who caught just so many ocular and visual abnormalities in the past? This IAO position is simply a stroke of genius. The Pediatric Family Physician can simply hand over the vision screening, whoops, I meant to say testing; to yet another untrained ancillary medical support staff person, who can further demonstrate their complete ineptitude with someone else’s kid’s eyes.

Yet, ophthalmology has made a valid point. Why waste that kind of money only once in a child’s educational experience? The IAO has certainly made the case for 2 or 3 more wasteful spending forays along the road to a child’s higher education. Now lets see, that could mount up to a whole $150.00, maybe more, for a professional eye examination, and heaven forbid, additional $ for some corrective eyewear, if necessary.

I know only too well that the IAO can’t be saying that this is not their patient target population; that would be impossible to believe.

This IAO response has been paid for by the parents of children who have been ill served by this kind of thinking in the past. Hopefully, more kids will get better served because of this new law. Oh yes, I forgot to mention, I was once one of those kids!