Publications
Partners
She had barely turned 18 when she started drinking alcohol and smoking weed began.
Kaylee Muthart indulged in liquor and marijuana when she was with her friends, but also knew the importance of working diligently at her casual job, she told Cosmopolitan.
But a year later, she unknowingly smoked weed laced with “either cocaine or meth”, the now-20-year-old said.
She experienced numb lips and felt “like I was on top of the world”.
“I'd long been a religious Christian; the high made me feel particularly close to God.”
Just a few weeks later, she decided to smoke crystal meth.
“I stayed up for nearly three days and experienced hallucinations I wasn't expecting,” she candidly told Cosmopolitan. “When I looked in the mirror, I thought I saw blackheads coming out of my face and I spent an hour picking at my skin until I drew blood.”
Katy Thompkins was aware of her daughter’s mental-health issues and drug abuse, but couldn’t convince Kaylee to seek professional help, Business Insider writes.
On 4 February this year, Katy recorded a conversation with Kaylee, in which Kaylee agreed to go to a rehab facility the following week.
It was the proof she needed to get a court order and have her daughter committed.
But Kaylee bought meth from her drug dealer the very next day and later that night, took the largest dose she’d ever taken in her life. She was still high the following morning, wandering down a railroad track while the friend she had gotten high with went to church.
Here’s what then happened, in her own words, as told to Cosmopolitan:
“I remember thinking that someone had to sacrifice something important to right the world, and that person was me. I thought everything would end abruptly, and everyone would die, if I didn't tear out my eyes immediately. I don't know how I came to that conclusion, but I felt it was, without doubt, the right, rational thing to do immediately.
So I pushed my thumb, pointer, and middle finger into each eye. I gripped each eyeball, twisted, and pulled until each eye popped out of the socket — it felt like a massive struggle, the hardest thing I ever had to do. Because I could no longer see, I don't know if there was blood. But I know the drugs numbed the pain.”
Read Kaylee’s full account here
A pastor heard Kaylee screaming, “I want to see the light!” and rushed over with a group of men.
Paramedics arrived and Kaylee was airlifted via helicopter to Greenville Memorial Hospital in South Carolina.
“While all this was happening, my mom was on her way to the courthouse with her recording to get me legally committed. She was too late.”
Doctors performed an emergency surgery to remove what was left of her eyes and attempted to preserve her optic nerves and prevent infection.
When she woke up two days later, Kaylee says everything around her was dark.
“I knew I was blind, but when I sensed my mom by my side. I knew I would be okay.”
She spent a week in hospital, repeatedly suffering terrible headaches in her temples and behind her eye sockets.
“When I asked friends and family members who visited me what I looked like without eyes, I was told there's red tissue (muscle filling the socket) and a white spot (my optic nerve endings) where my eyeballs used to be,” she says.
“When my sockets are fully healed, hopefully next month, I'll get eye prosthetics to fill out my face, although they won't help me see.”
After her week in hospital, Kaylee was transferred to a psychiatric in-patient treatment facility, where she was officially diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
She was put on a mood stabilisers and started therapy.
“It took losing my sight to get me back on the right path, but from the bottom of my heart, I'm so glad I'm here.”
Sources: Cosmopolitan, Business Insider, Huffington Post Sa
