Jonathan's Amazing Eyes
Jonathan Thore Swartz was born in August of 2004. He was born with extensive cataracts in both of his eyes, making him blind at birth.
Both of the lenses in his eyes were cloudy, blocking all light from entering his eyes, as seen in this photo:
The infant brain needs the eyes to be exposed to light within the first 2 months after birth, in order to complete the "wiring" of the visual cortex. If the problem is not fixed within the first 2 months, the infant brain stops "wiring" the visual cortex, even if the problem is fixed later.
If, for example, we waited a year and then fixed the problem, it would be too late. The brain will have "given up" and will never resume wiring the visual cortex after 2 months of waiting for light to arrive. He would be blind for life. So timing is important.
The rest of his eyes worked normally, but the cataracts in both of his lenses prevented any light from entering his eyes. In order to allow light to enter his eyes, both of his lenses needed to be surgically removed. This drawing shows where the lens is in the human eye:
He was born in O'Conner hospital, on a Friday. The following Monday we took him up to UCSF hospital in San Francisco, where he was seen by a pediatric eye-surgeon. Cataract-surgery on infants is rare, so there are only a few hospitals that do this in America. UCSF is one of them.
Giving general anesthesia to an infant can be dangerous (they may not wake up), so his surgeons at UCSF hospital waited till he was 4 weeks old, half-way into the critical 2-month "window" of time in which the cataracts needed to be removed. His body was stronger at this point, and could tolerate the anesthesia. But he was so small that his entire head fit inside of the gas-mask that adults put on their mouth when "going to sleep" for surgery.
They cut into his right eye first and removed his entire lens. Then, a week later, then did the same to his left eye. This is him during the week after his first surgery:
He wore eye patches for one week after each surgery, and then they were removed. Beginning at the age of 4 weeks, he started wearing contact lenses in both eyes. This was necessary because, without a lens, the eye has no way of focusing light. So wearing a contact is like putting an artifical lens on the outside of the eye.
For about the first 2 months, it required 3 people to put his lenses in his eyes. He never slept with them in his eyes: we put them in his eyes every morning and removed them every night. One person had to hold him down, while he cried very loudly, a second person pried his eyes open, and a third person put in his lenses. It was a challenging process every day.
But then, one day, he suddenly stopped protesting. At about 2 months, one day he simply stopped crying and he willingly opened his eyes. Perhaps he decided it wasn't worth the energy. Now he lets me stick my fingers in his eyes and he doesn't mind. So the process is much easier now.
When he is older he will be able to have an artifial lens surgically put into his eyes. But his eyes are still growing, so this won't happen while he is a child.
This is what his lenses look like, up-close. They are barely visible, looking like a little bubble over each eye:
With his lenses in, he now sees at around 20/60 (with 20/20 being normal). But this is only at a fixed distance, about his own arm's length. He doesn't have the ability to focus on distances farther away or close-up. His lens prescriptions will keep changing as his eye grows.
The only unforseen issue we have to deal with is the fact that he eats his contact-lenses. Sometimes he rubs them out of his eyes, and he sees them in his hands, and he puts them in his mouth and swallows them. If this is the price for his vision, I am willing to deal with it...
So he can now see pretty normally, good enough for a kid to play. He is also learning his father's trade, in his own way...
