Greek Week Gets Personal
This year's week of philanthropy will support research for an SDSU fraternity member's untreatable disease.
Jeremy Poincenot settled easily into college life. The 19-year-old sophomore at San Diego State joined a fraternity, selected international business as a major and was set to graduate in four years. Then his world turned upside down.
It started as a seemingly harmless onset of blurry vision while walking on campus. Six weeks later, he was legally blind.
After a series of distressing misdiagnoses, his mother correctly identified the culprit—Leber’s Hereditary Optic Neuropathy (LHON), an untreatable, rare genetic disease that results in hurried vision loss, most often for college-aged males.
Living life legally blind
Poincenot’s condition impacted his central vision in both eyes, rendering him legally blind and unable to perform tasks that he once undertook with ease, such as driving, reading without magnification and seeing faces.
“In a month-and-a-half, my vision went from 20-20 to no central vision,” Poincenot said. “You could say it was comparable to 20-3,000.”
“My initial reaction, to be honest, was ‘I hope there is such a thing as an afterlife,' because I thought, 'the life that I was living was over.’”
Poincenot overcame his initial shock and resiliently began to recover his old life as best he could. In the process, he discovered a new perspective and the inspiration to live life more fully.
Inspiring the Greek community
A member of Sigma Phi Epsilon, Poincenot’s battle with LHON inspired the Greek community to select the Doheny Eye Institute as the beneficiary of Greek Week 2010, April 19-23, in the hopes of raising funds to find a cure.
Greek Week is the biggest Greek philanthropy event of the year and this year’s beneficiary was selected after fellow fraternity and sorority members recognized that Poincenot achieves a great deal in spite of the tremendous impact that LHON has had on his life.
This year, Poincenot completed the Tri-City Medical Center Carlsbad Half-Marathon. In 2009, he won third place at the 64th Annual U.S. Blind Golf Association Championships and biked 230 miles from Santa Barbara to Carlsbad to raise money for the Doheny Eye Institute.
SDSU Greek organizations will hold several fundraising events and they aim to raise $50,000 for the Doheny Eye Institute’s race to find a cure for LHON.
About Greek Week
Every year, members of SDSU’s Greek system come together to participate in community service with a local non-profit organization and fundraising activities that benefit a worthy cause.
