Long Journey to Career as Vision Therapist

Elizabeth Tincher’s journey to Dr. Graebe’s office in Versailles, where she is in her first year as a Vision Therapist, started with a horrific car accident nearly 25 years ago.

Elizabeth was 19 and a student at UK in 1994 when she was nearly killed in the accident that left her with a ripped aorta and a blood clot on her brain. Her chances of survival were 3% at best.

Doctors – there were 21 on her team – put her in a drug-induced coma for four weeks so she could heal. Before they awakened her, doctors warned her parents that Elizabeth would probably be brain dead.

Instead, she woke up and immediately asked her preacher: “Why did this happen to me?” He assured her that good things would come of it – and he was right.

But first Elizabeth underwent six months of physical therapy and 15 months of speech therapy.

Doctors repaired her cheek bone and eye socket with titanium, and her right eye lost 70% of its function.

Still, Elizabeth returned to college with hopes of becoming a nurse. But her diminished depth perception made handling needles unsafe.

In the meantime, Elizabeth got married. A few weeks later, she was pregnant, and here’s the kicker: When she was 15 she was told she would never have children because of endometriosis.

“While I was in the coma I thought I had a baby and named her Kenzington Curry,” Elizabeth said. “It’s a miracle that after the car accident I could have children.”

She has two: Kenzington is now 20 and Collin is 18.

For 12 years, Elizabeth was a stay-at-home mom. She returned to UK in 2008, earned a degree in education in 2012 and became an elementary school teacher.

Last summer, Jennifer Lord, a Vision Therapist at Dr. Graebe’s office and Elizabeth’s first college roommate, told her about a career opportunity with Vision Therapy.

Elizabeth joined Dr. Graebe’s team in September and is certain that VT works – because it has worked with her.

“For the first time in 24 years, I can read with my right eye,” she said. “Vision Therapy has built new pathways from my eye to my brain. Everything I heard about Vision Therapy is happening with me.”

Elizabeth now knows why some of her students struggled to read, no matter what she did as their teacher.

“I love this job,” she said, “because I feel like I’m making a difference in a child’s life, which is what I’m passionate about.”