Tamika Curruthers is resolute that nothing in life will ever get her down. In fact, the visually impaired Curruthers is a therapeutic masseuse. She learnt her skill at HEART Trust/NTA five years after she went blind.

“I am a very independent person. I am a go-getter and I am a fighter. Nothing can get me down, not even sight,” she told the

Jamaica Observer during an interview last Thursday.

According to Curruthers, she went blind in 2007 — 19 days after starting medication for meningitis. She believes she was wrongly diagnosed.

“They were treating me for the wrong thing. They were treating me for meningitis, which I [found out I] didn’t have after doing diagnostic tests. They gave me the meningitis medication before they did the diagnostic test, then after that they realised that I didn’t have meningitis. That gave me a stroke in my optic nerve,” Curruthers explained.

The mother of five, who was studying nursing when she lost her sight, said she had no other choice but to contact HEART Trust/NTA to learn a skill that would be compatible with her disability.

“I used to be a student with HEART (Trust/NTA) before. I did a chef course with them… so I called them up and said to them that they need to choose a profession that I don’t have to use my eyes, but my hands, and they told me about HEART College of Beauty Services,” Curruthers said.

She later enrolled in a class with 17 other visually impaired students.

Out of the 18 trained therapeutic masseuses, she said she is the only one who pursued it as a career.

Prior to her training, Curruthers went through a rehabilitation process at the Jamaica Society for the Blind, which lasted one year. She told the Observer that it took her three months to learn how to use the computer again.

After completing her training at HEART Trust/NTA, she interned at Heart Salon, which is more popularly known as Salon 10. She has been working there since.

Parenting children between the ages of seven and 16 years old, the mother of five said she is motivated by her children’s academic performance.

Also an entrepreneur, Curruthers works independently on a part-time basis.

“During the course they taught us to be entrepreneurs, and so I went ahead. I work on my own. I do wellness days at offices and house calls. I now rent a little place for myself at Excelsior Community College. I do massages there too,” she disclosed, adding that she is usually very busy.

She admitted, though, that she is sometimes crippled by discrimination, as she is not making as much money as she would want to make because of the public’s perception of visually impaired people.

“People are so discriminative about blind persons touching them. I have a lot of clients, but they don’t want to pay the money that they pay when they go to the spa and pay. They want to give me little and nothing because I am blind and you know they don’t want to pay us the money the massage worth.

“They would come and say, ‘I went to other places’ and call some big names and say, ‘I haven’t got a good massage like this’, but they don’t want to pay the money for it.

“People look at us like we are ‘nobodies’, and I would like to send a message to them and to let them know that we are human beings,” Curruthers insisted. “Disabilities on a whole don’t pardon anybody. Anybody can be disabled.”

She was quick to point out that she does not identify herself as being disabled because she is “very much abled”.

“When I do a massage I can tell the person’s skin tone, whether you are white, dark or chocolate… All my focus is my touch,” she stated.

At the same time, Curruthers said society has created a negative environment for people living with disabilities.

“People normally say, ‘oonu blind, oonu fi stay a oonu yard; oonu fi have oonu own bus’. I think that is what drive [away] other blind person… you know, society cow dem down,” Curruthers reasoned.

She, however, stated that she will not allow society to “cow her down”. In fact, the therapeutic masseuse said it took her less than a year to accept the fact that she will never be able to see again.

Curruthers has her sights set on a successful future. She told the Observer that her long-term goal is to open as many spas as possible so she can employ people who are visually impaired.

Despite half of her brain and tongue being “dead” as a result of the stroke, she said she is able to do about 15 to 20 massages per day.

Curruthers told the Observer that she is now working on her first book, which is titled ‘A Journey to Independence with Challenges’.

The book, she said, will speak to some of the day-to-day obstacles she has experienced as a person living with a disability.