Narrator: This video
discusses a patient's personal treatment
of adult blepharospasm with XEOMIN, incobotulinumtoxinA.
Individual results may vary.
Talk with your doctor about treatment options,
including XEOMIN.
Please see important safety information,
including boxed warning at the end of this video.
(bright upbeat music)
-: You know what?
Where I am now with XEOMIN,
I'm still doing something to fill my soul.
My name is Dona Norton.
We are in Ocean City, New Jersey,
about a block from the ocean.
I can't imagine not being an artist.
I can't imagine not being creative.
With embroidery,
I started actually doing it when I was in high school
and it was sort of a hippie thing.
I think it's just something I feel in my soul.
When I lost that, I lost a big part of myself.
I have a condition called benign essential blepharospasm,
which means that I can't control the muscles around my eyes.
My eyes will slam shut without any rhyme or reason.
They just close.
You feel like you have sand and glass in your eyes.
And a lot of people that have what I have
will shut themselves in.
It was about 22 years ago, one day in the office
that I was trying to put a whole big order
into the computer,
and all of a sudden it was like a light switch went off
and I couldn't see.
(static buzzes)
So that was when I started mourning the loss of me.
I couldn't drive.
Work stopped.
I was really, really sad
and I'd never been sad in my whole life.
I saw many different kinds of doctors.
No one could figure it out.
And then finally I went to a neurologist.
He looked at me right away and said, you have blepharospasm.
Not only did I lose my life basically,
my whole expression was gone.
I lost my smile.
I lost my joy.
And I was ripe and ready for XEOMIN.
(gentle suspenseful music)
With XEOMIN, I got my smile back, and you know what?
I decided to choose joy from that moment on.
I can feel that I can control my eyes.
I can control my expression.
Where I am now,
I get probably 10 to 20 injections around my eyes.
It takes about 15 to 20 minutes to have that done.
And probably if you are a needlephobe person,
you would think that it's painful, but it's really not.
I actually enjoy it now,
because I know it's gonna bring me relief.
And I actually will go in now with other patients
who are scared and hold their hand
and assist them in injections.
With XEOMIN, the joy is still there
for the last couple years.
I'm doing a peace sign now, which I love
because I just feel like
if I can just spread a little bit more kindness
and peace on this earth, one jacket at a time, (chuckling)
oh, it would just be, you know, wonderful.
(gentle suspenseful music)
What's the mission?
Because I chose joy, I needed to start something
that would reach people outside of me.
Store Clerk: Hi, how are you doing?
-: Good. How are you doing today?
-: Okay, okay. -: I just made some new stuff.
Gonna hang you up on the rack.
Store Clerk: Hang 'em up.
-: My husband and I started thinking about
what can we do for our community?
There are people here that are really desperate
that really need our help.
Now we have a huge thrift store
and we have a food pantry there.
It's called Second Chance 'cause everyone needs one.
That's what I wanna work towards,
making changes in people's lives.
With XEOMIN, I'm so blessed to be able to do that.
So I've come to a place in my life
where I enjoy being more active
in ministering to people that have blepharospasm.
There are support groups,
and I actually have one that I go to quite often,
but now that I can reach out,
that I can look at other people,
I can say do you feel like you
maybe have a problem with your eyes?
And I usually say, it can be different.
You don't need to suffer.