This tear-jerking PSA shows a homeless woman discussing the one item she never let go.
'It means to me that I'm a fighter.'
The last thing Dawn Miller remembers after coming down with a sudden splitting headache in her Florida condo was calling an ambulance.
Then, it all went dark.
“I must have passed out," she recalls of that terrifying night in 2014. "Because the next thing I remember was three weeks later, waking up in the hospital.” When she came to, confused and with part of her head shaved, Miller learned she'd had an aneurism. She was lucky to be alive.
However, that's about the same time it felt like Miller's luck ran out.
Despite working two jobs, the medical costs Miller accumulated in the hospital were too much for her to handle. Eventually, as a new PSA from the Robin Hood Foundation notes, she became homeless. With the money she had left, Miller left Florida for her hometown of New York, believing there'd be more services for struggling people like her in NYC than in the Sunshine State. It was there, standing in a crowded, overwhelming transit hub asking others for help, when the realities of homelessness really hit her.
“I was in shock,” she said. “Once I got here, standing with my suitcases in Port Authority, I felt like I could break down and cry.”
She lost everything ... well, almost everything.
Throughout her experience being homeless, the one thing Miller never let go of was her college diploma.
She'd gone back to school at the age of 42. She graduated from Pace University with a degree in communications. She knows what it means — and what it takes — to work hard and achieve your goals.
"I graduated with a 3.71 GPA," she says. "I did very well. I was very proud of myself. And every time I look at my degree, I have something to be proud of.”
In some ways, just holding on to the diploma reminded her that she's a fighter. And it helped her find a path to a better life.
Miller is part of a new series called "The Things They Carry," where she appears along with four other people who've experienced homelessness discussing an item they never let go of.
The video is by the Robin Hood Foundation, a poverty-fighting group based in New York City. A man named William held on to a pair of pants he wore every day on the streets. "I keep these jeans here to remind myself of where I come from," he said.
For Hector, it was a wallet his mother gave him years ago. "The wallet saved me," Hector says in the PSA, explaining how just remembering his mother stopped him from killing himself moments before he was about to do so. "I always keep it for myself."
Thanks to a few helping hands, things are looking up for Miller.
She discovered Urban Pathways, a program of Robin Hood's focused on fighting homelessness in New York. Now Miller has a part-time job and expects to be living in a new home in the Bronx, before Christmas.
She hasn't forgotten what it felt like that day in Port Authority, though — that devastating feeling like she'd lost it all. She hopes her story inspires others to see the world a little bit differently too.
“Keep an open mind and an open heart when you’re dealing with someone less fortunate," she says, noting homelessness can come out of nowhere. "It can hit anybody."
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An Irish woman went to the doctor for a routine eye exam. She left with bright neon green eyes.
It's not easy seeing green.
Did she get superpowers?
Going to the eye doctor can be a hassle and a pain. It's not just the routine issues and inconveniences that come along when making a doctor appointment, but sometimes the various devices being used to check your eyes' health feel invasive and uncomfortable. But at least at the end of the appointment, most of us don't look like we're turning into The Incredible Hulk. That wasn't the case for one Irish woman.
Photographer Margerita B. Wargola was just going in for a routine eye exam at the hospital but ended up leaving with her eyes a shocking, bright neon green.
At the doctor's office, the nurse practitioner was prepping Wargola for a test with a machine that Wargola had experienced before. Before the test started, Wargola presumed the nurse had dropped some saline into her eyes, as they were feeling dry. After she blinked, everything went yellow.
Wargola and the nurse initially panicked. Neither knew what was going on as Wargola suddenly had yellow vision and radioactive-looking green eyes. After the initial shock, both realized the issue: the nurse forgot to ask Wargola to remove her contact lenses before putting contrast drops in her eyes for the exam. Wargola and the nurse quickly removed the lenses from her eyes and washed them thoroughly with saline. Fortunately, Wargola's eyes were unharmed. Unfortunately, her contacts were permanently stained and she didn't bring a spare pair.
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Since she has poor vision, Wargola was forced to drive herself home after the eye exam wearing the neon-green contact lenses that make her look like a member of the Green Lantern Corps. She couldn't help but laugh at her predicament and recorded a video explaining it all on social media. Since then, her video has sparked a couple Reddit threads and collected a bunch of comments on Instagram:
“But the REAL question is: do you now have X-Ray vision?”
“You can just say you're a superhero.”
“I would make a few stops on the way home just to freak some people out!”
“I would have lived it up! Grab a coffee, do grocery shopping, walk around a shopping center.”
“This one would pair well with that girl who ate something with turmeric with her invisalign on and walked around Paris smiling at people with seemingly BRIGHT YELLOW TEETH.”
“I would save those for fancy special occasions! WOW!”
“Every time I'd stop I'd turn slowly and stare at the person in the car next to me.”
“Keep them. Tell people what to do. They’ll do your bidding.”
In a follow-up Instagram video, Wargola showed her followers that she was safe at home with normal eyes, showing that the damaged contact lenses were so stained that they turned the saline solution in her contacts case into a bright Gatorade yellow. She wasn't mad at the nurse and, in fact, plans on keeping the lenses to wear on St. Patrick's Day or some other special occasion.
While no harm was done and a good laugh was had, it's still best for doctors, nurses, and patients alike to double-check and ask or tell if contact lenses are being worn before each eye test. If not, there might be more than ultra-green eyes to worry about.