Twenty-year-old Kaylee Muthart, from Anderson, South Carolina, will now wear prosthetics for the rest of her life.
Ms Muthart had been a star student, even earning a spot in the National Honor Society, while working and smoking marijuana with her friends on the weekends.
She knew addiction ran in her family, so she was careful to stay away from ‘more serious drugs.’
Ms Muthart left school at 17, hoping to work more and save up to go to college, but her decision to drop out sent her life into a downward spiral.
She got in with the wrong crowd and began partying heavily, which eventually led her to drug abuse, a mental breakdown and finally a disturbing act of self-harm.
Just days before going to a rehab facility, Ms Muthard took a larger dose of meth than she normally would, and was high and hallucinating for hours.
She said: ‘I thought everything would end abruptly, and everyone would die, if I didn’t tear out my eyes immediately.Â
‘I don’t know how I came to that conclusion, but I felt it was, without doubt, the right, rational thing to do immediately.’
Her memories are fuzzy, she said, but based on the small things she does remember and details she pieced together from other witnesses, she explained that she believed she had to meet someone at church.
So she walked along a railroad track toward it.
Her mother had just a day earlier convinced Kaylee to go to a rehab facility.
