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Visually Impaired Kid Receives Gift For Better Sight
Posted: Dec 10, 2012 10:10 PM by Morgan Frances - MFrances @kristv.com
Updated: Dec 11, 2012 7:42 AM
ROBSTOWN - A nine-year-old boy in Robstown battling a rare eye disease called will receive an early Christmas present tomorrow.
Little Marty Velasco is just like any other kid. He loves his Legos, loves to play on his iPad, and especially loves to color. There's something that sets him apart, however, from his classmates. Now nine years old, Marty has had to deal with a vision disease he was diagnosed with at the age of four.
"My vision was seeming better but then it started getting worse," Marty said.
The disease, called Vogt-Koyanagi-Harada (VKH), has left Marty's vision so poor he can hardly see his teacher at school and struggles viewing his own homework.
The vision he sees on a daily basis is blurry and dark. But with a video magnifier called a Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) Marty is allowed to see things, like his homework, a whole lot clearer.
The CCTV Marty uses now belongs to his school and lugging it to and from home is particularly difficult for his mom, Martina. This year she was diagnosed with bile duct cancer. She's going through chemotherapy which sometimes makes her so exhausted she can't lift the heavy equipment. She says they'd buy a new one in a flash but CCTVs are expensive.
Thanks to the the Children's Vision Alliance in Houston, however, Marty and his mom won't have to worry about moving the CCTV around anymore because the organization is giving him Marty one for free.
"They're very expensive," said Marty's mom, Martina, "That's something that I would have never been able to afford because they're anywhere between two-, three-thousand, four-thousand dollars."
It's a small piece of equipment that will hopefully help a family that's been through so much this year.
Martina said, "Through the toughest of storms the palm tree usually bends but it never breaks and that's what I keep reminding him, 'Sometimes that we're like the palm tree. Even though we're going through the toughest of storms,' you know, 'that we're going to get through this together.'"
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