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COLORADO SPRINGS, COLO. -- He was 10 years old and completely blind.

That's the situation now 23-year-old Terry Garrett had to deal with.  After losing his sight in one eye at the age of 5, too many surgeries and scar tissue caused him to lose sight in his right eye as a fifth grader.  Garrett said while he was bitter at first, his friends and family helped him deal with the impairment.

"After several years of practice, I realized this isn't going to be something that holds me back.  It's going to be something that strengthens me and carries me forward," Garrett said.

Now in his fifth year at University of Colorado at Colorado Springs (UCCS) as a mechanical engineer major with an aerospace engineering minor, Garrett has multiple talents propelling him forward, Iike working towards getting his black belt in karate. 

Another talent he's been working towards for years: Abe's Exoddus. It's a video game with sound effects advance enough that the gamer is able to play and win the game using only his ears.

"I started listening to more of the sounds in the game and piecing stuff together to make a visual image inside my head about what the game has going on," Garrett said.

As a student, Garrett works at Mind Studios at UCCS, doing lab research.  His co-workers said they find him to be inspirational.

"Anything at all- challenges.  They always come up and being fully able, it can get negative or whatever," co-worker Luke La Bella said.  "But the real inspirational thing is seeing Terry because he has a lot of drive and motivation.  He doesn't give up."

One of the things Garrett said he really missed after losing his sight was video games.  Many didn't have the sound capabilities to keep playing, but when his brother showed him a game called Abe's Odyssey after he'd lost his vision, it peaked his interest.  Years later, Abe's Exoddus came out on the Playstation 3 console.  He said the game took him about a month of playing and memorizing before he was able to complete it. 

Like all of his challenges in life, Garrett tries to find the solution rather than focusing on the problem.

"There's a solution. We've got to find one," Garrett said.

But for this gamer, getting his sight back isn't another goal. 

"If I got my sight back, it'd actually be a challenge for me, because I'd have to learn how to write, how to use my eyes all over again," Garrett said.  "I'm just dandy being blind."