Student beats cancer, loses vision

"Aw, he's so cute. Look how calm he is," a passerby said.

"He's adorable. What's his name?" another asked.

Kyle Coon, a 19-year-old UCF sophomore, is used to the attention his Seeing Eye dog Tyrone gets, but he says eventually people just get used to it. Traveling around campus with Tyrone, a well-trained Golden Retriever, is just one of the ways Coon has had to adapt to college life at UCF as a blind student.

Coon was diagnosed with retinoblastoma, a cancer that develops in the retina of the eye, when he was 10 months old. At such a young age, Coon was faced with the difficult challenge of fighting against cancerous cells that were threatening to take away his vision and, possibly, his life. Countless hospital visits and many years later, Coon was able to win the fight against cancer – but at the cost of losing his sense of sight. When he was 5 years old, his left eye was removed; his right eye was removed one year later on Oct. 9, 1997.

"He was scared and angry, but we prepared him as much as we could. I'm a Marine, and part of getting through this is [having] the mindset that this is more an inconvenience than a debilitating disability," Kyle's father Steve Coon said. "We were fortunate that at such a young age we were able to prepare and challenge him from the very beginning."

His father said that Kyle began to fall into a state of depression because of his condition. In hopes of helping his son cope, he set up a meeting for Kyle to be introduced to Erik Weihenmayer, the son of a fellow Marine. Weihenmayer is also blind, and he had been working as a motivational speaker at the time.

"The timing couldn't have been better because at that point Kyle was going through a tough time," Steve said. "He's been an inspiration to Kyle."

Weihenmayer, the first blind person to climb the world's Seven Summits, became Kyle's mentor. Kyle has since become very involved in physical activities, finding more and more ways to challenge himself. He is a valuable member of the UCF wrestling team as well as a member of an outdoor adventure group called Team Sight Unseen. Kyle has had the opportunity to climb Mount Everest with his team, which consists of one other visually impaired person and four sighted adventurers.

Life at UCF may not be as adventurous as climbing mountains, but it certainly takes time and practice to adjust to the large college campus. Kyle, who lives on campus, enlisted the help of an orientation and mobility specialist from Lighthouse Central Florida to assist him in navigating the buildings and finding his classes each semester.

"Kyle brings his class schedule to us and we work with him on teaching him to find his way from point A to point B using noise cues and other landmarks he has already learned," said Kim Pawling, director of Education and Rehabilitation Services at Lighthouse Central Florida. "Our mobility specialist will walk with him through campus without working his dog so that Kyle knows how to get places on his own. His dog doesn't lead the way; instead, [Tyrone] is a tool used to guide him around obstacles that are not there on a regular basis."

"Everyone has to learn how to get around a campus, I just have to learn to do it in a different way," Kyle said. "I adapt to my surroundings just like everybody else."

Beyond adapting to his surroundings and navigating through campus, Kyle must also adapt in the classroom.

"He is a great student, very quiet, gets along with the other students and never makes an excuse for himself," Kyle's communication professor, Jonathan Matusitz, said. "He always turns in work on time, and I hardly have to adjust my teaching styles for him."

Kyle takes his own notes, listening intently to what is being discussed in the lecture while Tyrone sleeps peacefully underneath the desk.

"Sometimes I ask the professor to email me the notes, but not always," Kyle said. "I try to be fairly independent on my own."

He uses BrailleNote Apex to take notes in class, which allows him the ability to print or transfer documents as needed. It hooks to a printer or can export documents to Microsoft Office to be emailed to professors when necessary.

Kyle, who is working toward a degree in interpersonal communication, is not sure what life holds for him, but whatever the outcome, it's sure to be an adventure.