Posted on 10/01/2015 10:46:05 AM PDT by nickcarraway
A North Carolina woman says she is happier than ever after she fulfilled her lifelong wish of becoming blind.
Jewel Shuping, 30, has Body Integrity Identity Disorder, according to Barcroft TV.
BIID is a condition in which able-bodied people believe they are meant to be disabled.
She told Barcroft TV that her fascination with blindness started when she was a child.
“By the time I was six I remember that thinking about being blind made me feel comfortable,” she said.
Shuping says that when she was a teenager, she started wearing thick black sunglasses, and even got her first cane when she was 18.
By the age of 20, Shuping says she was fluent in braille.
“I was ‘blind-simming’, which is pretending to be blind, but the idea kept coming up in my head and by the time I was 21 it was a non-stop alarm that was going off,” she told Barcroft TV.
Her need to lose her sight increased as she got older, and by 2006, she claims she found a psychologist who was willing to help her.
Shuping says the psychologist put numbing eye drops into her eyes, and then a couple of drops of drain cleaner.
“It hurt, let me tell you. My eyes were screaming and I had some drain cleaner going down my cheek burning my skin,” she said. “But all I could think was ‘I am going blind, it is going to be okay.”
The woman says it took about half a year for the damage to take full effect.
“When I woke up the following day I was joyful, until I turned on to my back and opened my eyes – I was so enraged when I saw the TV screen,” she told Barcroft TV.
One of her eyes eventually had to be removed, her other eye had glaucoma and cataracts, Barcroft TV reports.
Shuping says she originally told her family it was an accident, but they later found out the truth.
She says her mother and sister have since cut contact.
She told Barcroft TV that she has no regrets and that she hopes to help other blind people live an independent life.
“I really feel this is the way I was supposed to be born, that I should have been blind from birth,” she said. “When there’s nobody around you who feels the same way, you start to think that you’re crazy. But I don’t think I’m crazy, I just have a disorder.”
According to Barcroft TV, Shuping is hoping her story will help raise public awareness of BIID and encourage people with the condition to seek professional help.
Yes, a great many of us do that, just take a look at the political class. Few could actually know the dollar value. The interesting question is how many would say ‘no’ to $10M. Not many I suspect while it is said it profits one nothing to gain the world and lose ones soul few really care that much. Most of us can be bought if the price is right, and often the price is pretty low.
Can you imagine if a gay man openly hoped that his story of swinging in Dupont Circle and getting HIV would encourage other gay men to seek professional help? He'd be pilloried and called self-loathing.
Is Ms. Bruce Jenner willing to admit that he has a disorder?
theres a Yiddish word..that sounds a lot like Shuping....
Looking around at the world...I understand sometimes where she’s coming from.
The “psychologist” needs to be charged with malpractice!
Yeah, no, she has a crazy disorder.
I once had a buddy go into a strip club pretending to be blind.”
That line is sooooo ripe for jokes!
The jokes just kinda wrote themselves. One of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.
I guess you had to be there.......
But trust me. It was hysterical!
She’s braver than Bruce Jenner. Both should be institutionalized
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