"Sometimes people would make fun of me," 11-year-old Cain said.
In third grade, Cain read at a kindergarten level. Then, she was diagnosed with dyslexia, a reading disorder where impulses traveling from her eyes to the brain did not sync between her eyes.
Her teacher Cheryl Tullis tried almost everything.
"I just couldn't justify teaching her phonics again for another 180 days, when she had already done four years of school," said Tullis, a teacher at Shore Acres Elementary School in Florida.
Tullis recommended Cain try specialty tinted lenses called ChromaGen Lenses, a series of colored filters that change the wavelength of light entering the eye and allow information to properly reach the brain.
Cain's mother Telsea Galbraith said she was skeptical at first, but that the new lenses worked wonders.
"I saw my daughter go from being somewhat reclusive and not having any self-esteem to being able to pick up a book like a regular classmate and start to read," Galbraith said.
Cain jumped from reading 30 words per minute at a kindergarten level to 60 words per minute at a second grade level.
Cain can finally read a book that's meant for her, not a 5-year-old.
