Something wasn’t right. She was having nightmares and she wasn’t seeing things normally. Her husband told her she wasn’t acting like herself. She had been having headaches but thought they were from job stress.

Nothing could have prepared Kelly Stone for the news: An inoperable brain tumor on her pituitary gland was crushing her optic nerve. Within three months, as her tumor grew from quarter-sized to the size of a golf ball, she lost nearly all of her vision. Those months were terrifying for Kelly. She couldn’t distinguish the end of her driveway from the street, risking her life with every trip to the mailbox. The interior of her house felt unfamiliar and strange.

Kelly needed help. Aurora of Central New York’s Instructional Services for the Blind and Visually Impaired, funded in part by United Way of Central New York, taught her to use a cane and gave her back her mobility – both in her own home and in the community. Aurora helped improve the lighting in her home to maximize her eyesight and taught her tricks to make life easier around the house.

Today, three years after her diagnosis, Kelly is doing great. Two experimental brain surgeries using radiation appear to have halted the growth of her tumor. She suffers from daily migraines, but her medication helps relieve the pain. She’s in her second level of Braille, and she loves the language. She’s cut and burned her hands many times in the kitchen, but she never stopped preparing dinners. “My kids have told me my dinners are better than before because I take my time now,” she said.

Although Stone’s rare type of tumor has responded well to treatments, doctors cannot predict whether she will ever regain any of her lost eyesight. But her exceptional philosophy of life shows how well she has coped. “Sometimes you don’t need to see to really see what’s going on in the world. It goes beyond hearing, or a sense of people around you. There’s a sense of the outer things: caring, integrity, and what’s important in the world. The sense of time. Your whole being changes when you think you know what’s going on and something is taken from you. Your sense of what is and what isn’t important changes. I guess it’s a matter of life’s worth. I appreciate my life more, both the big things and the little things.”