"....Tanner was diagnosed with Stargardt disease, a genetic disease that causes progressive damage to the macula, the area of the eye that is responsible for straight-ahead vision. This means that those with Stargardt disease can only see out of their peripheral vision.
Tanner is the first to admit that growing up wasn’t easy. “I
had to put a lot of energy into the things I did,” she says, “I wasn’t able to
do reading and math and other school subjects the way that other kids did, so I
just had to work harder.”
Even with her eyesight worsening as time went on, Tanner was
able to find her niche. She learned how to play the violin purely by ear and
also pursued dance. In fact, when Tanner came to BYU as an undergraduate
student, her original major was dance!
It wasn’t until later that Tanner found nursing. Years later
she became a single mother who needed to provide for 3 kids. In that
circumstance, she looked into what a possible nursing career could bring. “I
thought there would be so many opportunities in nursing, because I could see
nurses doing things that I could imagine myself doing, in spite of my vision
impairment,” she says, “What I didn’t expect was that I would be able to
develop a specialty helping the blind, and I could use my own life experience
to help others.”
Your can read more about Dr. Tanner here:
Cheers!
Donna
