About Me

Therapeutic Optometrist and an Optometric Glaucoma Specialist 

Dr. Candace Lipshy was born and raised in Houston, Texas. She grew up around the profession of optometry, as her father George Lipshy was an optometrist there. She remained in Houston until college, attending the University of Texas at Austin, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in Biology. Following college, she returned to Houston to begin her optometry education at the University of Houston College of Optometry, earning her Doctor of Optometry in 1986. She remained in Houston for 2 years, working in her father’s Texas State Optical, as well as locum tenens positions in the Houston area. In 1988, she moved to Amarillo, and she and Dr. Andrew Alpar were married. She began her professional career in Amarillo with Primary Eye Care, located at Sears, where she stayed for 5 years. As Texas optometry laws were changing, allowing optometrists to treat more conditions, Dr. Lipshy desired to practice to the full extent of the new optometry laws. She realized that the small office she was in was not conducive to managing medical optometry patients, and she decided to move her practice to St. Luke Eye Institute. In 1993, she began practicing full-scope optometry in the practice her husband, Dr. Andrew Alpar, and father-in-law, Dr. John Alpar, established in 1986.

Dr. Lipshy is a Therapeutic Optometrist and an Optometric Glaucoma Specialist. She performs routine annual eye health evaluations for glasses and contact lenses for school age children through senior adults. She fits specialty soft and rigid gas permeable contact lenses for astigmatism and bifocal wearers. She treats eye infections and manages numerous eye diseases, such as dry eyes, glaucoma, cataracts, macular degeneration, thyroid, diabetes, and multiple sclerosis eye disease, monitoring for plaquenil eye changes, and eye changes from rheumatoid arthritis, to name a few.

Dr. Lipshy has earned the honor of being a Fellow of the American Academy of Optometry. There are only a handful of Fellows in Amarillo, and she was the first female optometrist in Amarillo to earn this status! Dr. Lipshy has participated in numerous FDA drug studies. She has served on the Amarillo BSA hospital provider network advisory board and was president for 2 years. She participated in a peer advisory panel for Bausch and Lomb contact lenses. St. Luke Eye Institute also provides eye exams for indigent patients through Catholic Charities, as well as caring for the Catholic Clergy and Sisters of the Texas Panhandle.

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Dr. Lipshy and Dr. Andrew Alpar have 4 children and 6 grandchildren. Dr. Lipshy has been a Girl Scout leader, a Tascosa High School swim team Booster President, a choir mom, a soccer mom, a wrestling mom, and a swimmer’s mom! She is an active member of Temple B’Nai Israel, and has served as President of the Board of Trustees. Now that her children are grown, Dr. Lipshy enjoys spending her free time with her grandchildren as well as hiking, ballet,, biking, yoga, scuba diving, traveling, and walking 2 BIG dogs!