Colorado cornea recipient shares journey, gratitude during Eye Donation Month

November is Eye Donation Month, an effort to boost new organ, eye, and tissue donor registrations and spread the word about giving the selfless gift of sight in Colorado.

Reflecting on old photos and seeing what she's overcome, cornea recipient Susan Mountain-Morgan feels an overwhelming gratitude.

She constantly battled eye issues when she was younger, from not seeing the blackboard, to later discovering she had no depth perception. When she was 26, she found out she had keratoconus. It's a disease where your cornea thins and a cone grows in front of your eye.

"As it progresses, your vision just gets blurrier and blurrier," Mountain-Morgan said.

"Were you ever at this point?" CBS News Colorado's Mekialaya White asked as Mountain-Morgan pointed to an image of a speed sign that was impossibly blurry to distinguish. 

"One of my eyes was," she said. "And I was in a state of depression. They told me eventually I would go blind from it."

But, thankfully, that's when the Rocky Mountain Lions Eye Bank stepped in to help. She got connected with a specialist who told her she needed a cornea transplant for both eyes.

"It can really change someone's life," said Rocky Mountain Lions Eye Bank's Jenn Venerable.

Mountain-Morgan is living proof of that.

"When I first found out I was getting a transplant, I just left my house and went on a very long walk. On my second one, I cried during my surgery because they told me you are very lucky. You have a very young donor and that's a good cornea. To think that someone would give me that gift, it's indescribable."

Because of that gift, her world is so much brighter with her daughter, grandchildren, and great-granddaughter.

"I finally got brave enough to learn how to drive when I was 38 because I could see so much better," she said with a laugh. "I also have a job that requires vision and it's made a huge impact on our whole family's life. Because I can see them smile and have a good time."

To learn more about how you can become a donor, click here: https://www.corneas.org/Be-a-Donor.