Saturday, Nov. 07, 2009

Surgery helps S.C. woman see after 12 years in dark

SUMTER -- On June 9, Cynthia Dicks woke up, a patch was taken off her eye and she opened it.

"I see something white," she told Dr. James Chodosh at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, affiliated with Harvard Medical School in Boston. "He said, 'White? That's my lab jacket.'"

Then Dicks, of Sumter, saw her cousin Mary Peoples, who has taken care of her the past 12 years, since she lost her sight. Peoples and her husband, Bernie, have been with Dicks every step of the way, including taking her to appointments with Dr. Heather Skeens at Storm Eye Institute, affiliated with the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. Mary Peoples also accompanied Dicks four times this year to Boston.

"I was looking around," she said. "It was good to see something. I was looking at my cousin Mary. ... All I could do was holler. I couldn't cry."

Dicks has a rare but serious condition known as Stevens-Johnson Syndrome. She developed it after she came down with a severe case of pneumonia and was given Septra, a combination of two antibiotics typically used to treat urinary tract infection.

The syndrome is an allergic reaction that includes rashes and burns, a persistent fever, blisters and swelling of the eyelids. She was blinded and lost her left eye. The disease also essentially robs the body of fluid, meaning Dicks cannot produce tears, saliva or sweat. Her nerves are "totally destroyed," she said, and the syndrome has weakened her immune system so much that she can easily catch any infection she's exposed to.

Before this happened, Dicks lived a normal life, working in quality control at Madison Industries. She had never been sick enough to be hospitalized. As part of the June surgery in Boston, doctors cut a small hole in the eyelid and cornea of her right eye and placed a lens there. She still wears dark sunglasses to cover her eyes, which are swollen shut by the Stevens-Johnson Syndrome, but she can see out of that tiny opening through her right cornea.

Her vision has been improving since the procedure. She said it started at about 20/2,000 but then improved to 20/200, 20/60 and now 20/40. That means, uncorrected, she has to be 20 feet away to see what a person with normal vision can see at a distance of 40 feet.

"I got to see my 93-year-old grandmother again," said Dicks. "I was going to see her at the hospital. It was good to be able to see her again."

The seemingly minor convenience of being able to walk in her home at Hampton Manor or in the office of Sumter Physical Therapy without being led by the hand is a major source of joy.

"Getting unattached after always depending on someone to do everything for me," Dicks said. "I'm enjoying it."

In the first few weeks after the surgery, even though Dicks could see, she started having doubts. Even though she had been assured her vision would improve, that change seemed to come about slowly - so much so that she worried she might lose her sight again.

"I went through a little depression," she said. "I thought the surgery wasn't going to be successful. But everything is great by the grace of God."

Dicks said she couldn't have come this far without the support of her family, friends and the many medical personnel who have attended to her.