Amy Slaton Opened up About Her Eye Condition and Blindness in 2015
Published March 7 2021, 11:20 a.m. ET
Long before she became a star of 1000-lb Sisters, Amy Slaton Halterman cleared up rumors about her disability benefits, explaining on YouTube that she received Social Security benefits not because of her weight, but because of her eye condition.
Amy Slaton was diagnosed with an eye condition called toxoplasmosis.
“It’s because I’m blind,” she said in the 2015 video, showing off her glasses. “They’re apple bottle glasses. They’re mostly for … strain and safety. They’re pretty much safety glasses. I’ve been like this all my life. I was born this way.”
As she said in the video, Amy was diagnosed with toxoplasmosis when she was younger. “In layman’s terms, that is what they call scars of my eyes,” she said. “Now, as you can see, one eye is straight and this eye goes this way. That’s part of my blindness, and also, I got astigmatism in the [left] eye.”
Amy told viewers that because of her eye condition, the peripheral vision in her right eye and the center vision in her left eye is obscured.
“I’ve been like that all my life,” she added. “I got made fun of because my eye goes wonky. I call [the right eye] my good eye because I can see out the center of it, but it is heavily strained, so I gotta wear these [glasses] sometimes.”
Amy also explained that she sees a shadowy hook shape floating in her eye and sometimes experiences glittery shapes and blurry vision sometimes.
Amy Slaton's eye condition comes from a parasite.
According to the Mayo Clinic, toxoplasmosis is a disease that comes from exposure to the Toxoplasma gondii parasite, often through eating undercooked contaminated meat or handling infected cat feces.
“They say if you’re pregnant, do not touch cat litter or feces or whatever,” Amy said in the video. “[When] my mom was pregnant with me 27 years ago, they didn’t know that, so that’s how I became blind, basically. One of the cats my mom had had this [parasite], and she didn’t know, and she would take out cat litter or whatever and clean up after the cats or whatever, and she was pregnant with me, so yeah, basically, don’t do it if you’re pregnant.”
Amy said she will be “completely blind” by age 35.
“The only treatment for me is to get new eyes, and if anything touches my right eye, I’ll be totally blind,” the future reality star said in the 2015 upload. “And [doctors] did say that I have fluid on my eyes, which causes headaches, and they also said that by the time I’m 35, I’ll be completely blind because my scars are growing. I don’t think I look too bad in glasses; I just don’t wear them enough to actually like them on myself.”
Amy also said that this topic was hard to talk about, but she wanted to refute the trolls who said that she was on Social Security because of her weight.
“I’ve deleted those comments, of course, so y’all can’t read them, but they said that we shouldn’t be on Social Security so we can sit on our lazy fat asses and use their taxpayer dollars and stuff like that. I delete them, I don’t care. But I’m just wanting to set the record straight. I’m not on disability for my weight. I’m on disability because of my eyesight.”
