Ann Roberts, 48, has been virtually blind for 23 years, yet her “mind’s eye” still has 20-20 vision.
Roberts, who subsists on Social Security disability payments and gets around with the help of a seeing-eye dog named Rosalie, sees herself one day returning to work – as a call-center telephone operator, perhaps, or a scheduling clerk in a doctor’s office.
“I missed the whole computer age,” said Roberts, who fell ill in the mid-1990s with an infection that took root in her optic nerve and injured part of her brain.
Ann Roberts, 48, and her seeing-eye dog Rosalie, volunteer two days a week at Erlanger Hospital.Soon after she got sick while living in Lafayette, La., her then-husband, Pat, died from complications from pneumonia, she said. Roberts’ life went south in a hurry. But now, more than two decades later, she refuses to live in her fears.
“My philosophy is: why be upset about something that you can’t change?” said Roberts, who lives in Chattanooga now, getting around town on CARTA buses and volunteering two days a week at Erlanger hospital.