Answer to Blindness Was Hidden in the Genes Jasmine Carrero has big doelike eyes, an almond-shaped face and a willowy frame that she calls boyish. She also has Stickler syndrome, a group of genetic disorders whose hallmarks are these elongated features; it is responsible not just for the elegant tapering fingers possessed by nearly everyone in her family, but also for the family's history of blindness. Ms. Carrero, 32, grew up severely myopic in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Nicknamed "Bottle Caps" by classmates because her eyeglass lenses were so thick that her eyes were nearly invisible, she had developed cataracts by the time she was a young adult, and they gradually misted over her eyes until she was legally blind. "I had to go by sound," she said. I had to go by color. At night, she could not leave the house. She coped, she said, by drawing inspiration from her blind grandmother, who had raised four children. "My grandmother is a blind seamstress," she said. It's not an impossibility, it's a challenge. Ms. Carrero dropped out of high school in 11th grade, after a teacher persisted in making untoward advances, she said. She has not been able to pass the high school equivalency exam. She got married and had two boys, Timothy and Travis Ramos, but the relationship with their father soured. Those with Stickler syndrome injure easily, particularly in delicate areas. When Timothy was 4, he appeared to have pinkeye; he had in fact suffered a retinal detachment after bumping into a coffee table, and had, like Ms. Carrero's father, gone blind in one eye. Genetic testing revealed, for the first time, the source of the family's longstanding history of optical travails: Stickler. Both children had it, and severe myopia. Timothy, 11, had an operation to preserve what remained of his sight. Around the good eye, doctors placed a scleral buckle, a rigid band that holds together the components of the eye, including a new lens. Afterward, her son's doctor approached her about her own eyes. The operations - new lenses, scleral buckles, removing her cataracts - were risky, but living in near-total darkness already, Ms. Carrero felt she had little to lose. The day after the first procedure, her vision had gone from 20/2,100 to 20/30. "To see like that was a dream come true," she said, "because even as a little girl I would wake up, and I always wondered what that feels like to wake up and see clear." Ms. Carrero's operations, and the struggle of raising two boys with pervasive medical issues - Travis, 9, is on the autism spectrum, and both boys go to a special school in Pelham where they study things like Braille along with regular class work - have made it difficult for her to find work. After falling behind on her rent, Ms. Carrero returned home one afternoon last year to find the windows shattered by firefighters and the door destroyed. Gas had poured out into the building from a leak in her stove; the landlord refused to make the apartment habitable, she said, until she paid her arrears. The family stayed briefly with her mother and father in the Bronx, but there was nowhere to put her furniture, like the boys" beds, couches and clothing, and she was forced to leave it behind. On one of her many trips to housing court to fight her eviction, Ms. Carrero heard about Catholic Charities Archdiocese of New York, one of the several charities supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. Caseworkers connected her with programs that put her in a new apartment, a tidy two-bedroom in the Bronx. Her rent is $1,085, and she receives about $580 in public assistance. She pays for the rest with the help of her family. Now, from a bright window, she watches the boys run up the steps as they return from school, calling out to them to be careful. They ask, "How was your day, Ma?" The fund has provided Ms. Carrero with $500 for bunk beds and mattresses for the boys, to replace the air mattresses and couch they have been sleeping on, end to end. Sometimes they roll out. "Every morning I find that out, that I'm sleeping on the floor," Travis said on a recent afternoon. Ms. Carrero has a 5-month-old, Lillian, with her new partner, Aubeen Lopez, 31, a teacher's assistant. Lillian was unplanned. Given her genetic history, Ms. Carrero did not at first want more children, and she constantly checks Lillian's eyesight, and hearing, which can also be affected by Stickler syndrome. She is hopeful that advances in medical technology will help, should Lillian be afflicted. "I'm so happy she's here," Ms. Carrero said. I want her to see me, her great-grandmother, her siblings. Even though they have these disabilities, these challenges, they got through.