There are two types of people on the job – those who work to live and those who live to work.

Jennifer Burwinkle is a proud member of the second group. She has been a kindergarten teacher in Palmyra, MO, for 24 years.


Jennifer Burwinkle

“I went to school in Palmyra. I teach kindergarten in the same classroom in which I attended kindergarten. I took over from the person who was my kindergarten teacher.”

Get the picture? 

“My job is extremely important to me. It’s more than a job. It’s my calling.”

When a medical situation led her to experience one of the darkest times of her life – literally and figuratively – Jennifer feared she would never see the faces of her students again.

“She was at high risk for severe, permanent vision loss,” said Sean Hendricks, MD, Blessing Health retina surgeon, who cared for Jennifer. 

A complex and rare case

Jennifer was told decades ago that the lengthy shape of her eyes made her very nearsighted. This condition results in a high risk for developing a retinal detachment.

The retina is a specialized part of the brain that lines the inside wall of the back of the eye. It detects light, then sends signals further back into the brain so that a person can see. The retina can separate from the back of the eye. This is called a retinal detachment. It can progress, leading to increasingly blurred, darker vision.  A detached retina can be a visually devastating problem that, without immediate and proper care, often leads to irreversible blindness.

Jennifer’s experience was extremely rare. Over the course of one year, retinae in both of her eyes detached. After the right retina detached, Dr. Hendricks delivered thousands of pulses of preventative laser to her left retina in an attempt to prevent it from detaching, but it was not to be.

To make matters worse for Jennifer, the detachment in the right eye was accompanied by the development of a macular hole, a complication that damages the sharpest part of a person’s central vision.

“As you might expect, two distinct problems which often lead to blindness, occurring in the same eye at the same time (detached retina and macular hole) amplifies the risk of a person never regaining full visual recovery,” said Dr. Hendricks.

He added that current medical studies suggest that approximately 1 in 7,000,000 people per year across the country might experience what Jennifer encountered.

Dr. Hendricks performed surgery on both of Jennifer’s eyes within a 12-month period. Certified by the American Board of Ophthalmology, Dr. Hendricks, a Quincy native, has vast eye surgical experience. As Chief Resident at Louisiana State University, he set the record among his resident peers of most cataract surgeries successfully performed. He then treated a high volume of patients with complex retinal problems during his two-year medical and surgical retina fellowship at the Vitreoretinal Foundation Eye Specialty Group, Memphis, TN, the oldest surgical retina training program in the United States.

Jennifer sees the light through support of family and medical team

Because it can take a re-attached retina as long as three years to heal completely and because both of Jennifer’s retinae detached within a year of each other, there was a significant period after her second surgery during which she was legally blind in both eyes.

“Not being able to see my kids’ faces and expressions, and not being able to read to my kids - my favorite part of the day - was so difficult,” she said.

“Even though Dr. Hendricks was absolutely wonderful about telling me this was going to happen, I was terrified. Dr. Hendricks was supposed to leave on vacation, but stayed an extra day to see me in the office to make sure I was doing well. When he left town, he gave me his cellphone number, and he called me from vacation to make sure I was okay.”

“I cannot say enough about his bedside manner and how much faith I have in him,” said an emotional Jennifer.

Out of the woods and back to class

Fast forward to summer 2022. Sight in Jennifer’s left eye was approaching 20/20 (perfect vision) and the right eye – the one that had the detached retina and macular hole - was continuing to heal well.

“I can pass any driver’s test,” she said. “I have great vision.”

Now, Jennifer is back at school, leading the Class of 2035.

“The joy, relief and gratitude I felt because I could again see their expressions and watch their eyes glow and light up,” she said as her voice trembled and trailed off briefly. “That’s what happens in kindergarten. It is just amazing to watch the kids grow and change and see the expressions in their faces.”

“She is truly what this story is about,” Dr. Hendricks added. “A wonderful person who teaches our young children. She dearly loves them, and they love her. It is her life’s work. So many have been blessed by Jennifer’s kind work and gentle spirit.” 

“She was understandably in anguish when faced with the possibility of not being able to work with these little ones anymore,” the doctor concluded “I am profoundly grateful that Jennifer is back where she belongs.”

For more on the care provided by Dr. Hendricks and Blessing Health ophthalmologist, Senem Salar-Gomceli, MD, go to blessinghealth.org/visioncenter.