I started this blog on behalf of my friend Jasmin Bailey in an effort to tell her story. Jasmin desperately needs help, but we are running out of places to look.

Jasmin began losing her vision in the middle of LDAC training with the U.S. Army at Fort Lewis, Washington during the summer of 2010. She was a contracted ROTC cadet, about to begin her senior year of college at Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, VA.

Jasmin completed LDAC training and was checked into Madigan Army Medical Center. She underwent many tests including MRIs and three painful spinal taps. Nothing unusual was found.

Upon returning to her hometown of Richmond, VA for the summer, Jasmin attended appointments at the Medical College of Virginia at VCU. During her last year of college she also went to Johns Hopkins and UVA, with all of the appointments ending the same way. Jasmin’s eyes looked fine. Nothing is wrong. Except that she is colorblind, has ‘floaters’, and has a steadily diminishing field of vision.

Jasmin was dropped from the Army two weeks before graduation and was denied workman’s compensation and disability. She still has no health insurance. It has been one year since her graduation as of May 2012, and Jasmin is now legally blind.

Since graduating Jasmin lives in Richmond, VA with her adoptive grandmother, her only form of familial support. Jasmin has never known her father, and was removed from her mother’s care at a very young age. Jasmin still goes to periodic appointments at MCV in Richmond, and her frustration is deepened with every one. They do the same tests, get the same results, and send her home to wait for a repeat of a doctor’s visit she’s had too many times.

Luckily Jasmin has been able to find work. She was hired as a barista at Starbucks, two miles from her home, because the manager is a friend’s husband. She walks to and from work multiple times a week by herself, listening carefully for traffic, with only a few close calls so far.

Jasmin has appealed to local politicians, lawyers, contacts with the Army and Virginia Military Institute, media outlets, and local government with little result.

She has been denied disability multiple times, but is still trying.

The point of telling Jasmin’s story is not to generate more sympathy. What she wants, and has told me many times, is to learn what is causing her blindness, and to get better. She is a proud, hardworking young woman who wants her life back. The only way that this might happen is if someone who can help, whether it be a medical professional or some sort of advocate, reaches out and lends resources that Jasmin does not have. Clearly, what we are doing is not working.

Thank you so much for reading. I genuinely mean that from the bottom of my heart. I don’t know a person less deserving of the situation Jasmin is currently in, and I hope every day there will be a breakthrough. Hopefully, we won’t have to wait too much longer.