Fullerton teen may lose eyesight after firework explodes near her

An 18-year-old from Fullerton has to put her life plans on hold after a firework seriously injured her, so much so that she may never see out of her left eye again. 

"I still cannot see, like I can't see very well and it's all black," teen Taylor Kim said. 

She said she was celebrating the Fourth of July with her family in Los Angeles County when someone lit a firework beside her. 

"I remember like someone lighting up a firework," she said.  "All of a sudden I turned around, it just exploded ... It just happened so quick."

Taylor, a month out of high school, wears glasses to cover up the stitches in her left eye. 

"If this didn't happen, my plan was to finish my internship and my volunteering at Kaiser and go into Biola this fall to pursue my nursing career," she said. "Since this happened, we're not sure about continuing that path, and we might have to go with a different path."

The Kim family is now focused on Taylor's vision and upcoming surgeries as well as figuring out how to pay for what could be a lifetime of care. The trauma doctor who treated Taylor after the accident conveyed to the family that there is no guarantee that her vision will return to normal.

"He couldn't guarantee us that she will ever see again," mother Jane Kim said. "He said she needs to follow up, have more surgeries because there's so much trauma and damage to her eye."

Her parents do not want to talk about the person responsible for the injuries and want to focus on fundraising to pay the bills while they take time off of work. 

"Never would have imagined something like this," dad Robert Kim said. "Just one incident is life-changing."

Taylor's next surgery will be in a couple of weeks. The family hopes doctors can restore her eye and vision.