"A Little More of My Life Back" (Helena's Story)
Helena spent her senior year of college trying to get through evening classes. She was three years out from an accident and still living with persistent post-concussion symptoms, including light sensitivity, and by that point she knew exactly how each class was going to go.
"Every single class, without fail, the combination of the fluorescent and LED lighting and hours of looking between my laptop and the screen at the front of the room would trigger a migraine," she said.
The longer she sat there, the worse it got. Her head would pound, the lights felt increasingly piercing, concentrating became harder, and nausea set in. There were nights she sat in class taking slow, deep breaths because she was trying not to throw up.
And then she still had to drive herself home. By the time she left class her eyes would be watering from the pain, and headlights coming toward her looked blurry and fuzzy while feeling like they were piercing straight through her eyes.
She would struggle through the drive, walk inside, turn off the lights, and go straight to bed, hoping the darkness would help. Then she would do it all over again at the next class.
Staying home was not really an option. She was finishing her degree, and class, screens, and artificial lighting all came with it.
A neuro-optometrist handed her a pair of TheraSpecs
Midway through the semester, Helena began neurorehabilitation at an outpatient concussion center. For the first time, three years after her accident, she saw a neuro-optometrist. Until then she had not known how significantly a concussion could affect vision, and she quickly learned that hers was more impaired than she had realized.
That specialist was the one who told her about TheraSpecs, and ordered her a pair.
The classroom didn't change
She started wearing them to class. The classroom had not changed, the lights had not changed, and the screens had not changed, but she finally had a tool that helped her exist in that environment.
Helena wearing FL-Pro lenses in our Shea WearOver (fitover) frame. She also uses Z-Blue glasses as well.
Why classrooms and offices are such hard rooms
Helena's description of a lecture hall will sound familiar to a lot of people. Fluorescent lighting and LEDs flicker at rates most people never consciously notice, and both put out a concentrated amount of blue wavelength light. Digital screens add more of the same, at close range, for hours.
These are also the rooms nobody gets to adjust. The lights are overhead, fixed, and shared. Precision tints like FL-Pro by TheraSpecs filter the wavelengths most associated with light sensitivity, which is one way to lower light exposure in spaces you do not control. FL-Pro may also help people live well with migraine as part of an overall light management plan.
Light sensitivity doesn't stay in the classroom
TheraSpecs did not stop being useful when Helena graduated. They came with her into the rest of her life.
"Light sensitivity doesn't only exist in a classroom. It shows up in grocery stores, airports, medical appointments, conferences, restaurants, events, watching TV, and all of the everyday places where you don't get to control the lighting around you."
Walking into a brightly lit room can decide how long she can stay, how much she can take part, or whether she can be there at all. Years later, she still does not go anywhere without her TheraSpecs, because she never knows which room is coming next.
"A little more of my life back"
What stayed with Helena is that nothing had to be fixed first. TheraSpecs did not require the world around her to become perfectly accommodating before she could take part in it. The fluorescent lights were still fluorescent lights. The screens were still there. The world was still bright. She just had a tool that made more of it reachable.
"When my neuro-optometrist handed me that first pair, I thought she was giving me a pair of glasses. I didn't know yet that she was giving me back classrooms, stores, restaurants, conferences, evenings out, and countless ordinary moments I had learned to brace myself for or avoid. She was handing me a little more of my life back."
Years later, she still doesn't leave home without them.
Thank you to Helena (@healingwithhelz) for sharing her story with us. Read more from others who wear TheraSpecs.
Last updated 2nd Nov 2026
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