This article was originally published in the May 2023 edition of Héma-Québec’s Magazine.

Patrick, cornea transplant recipient

Eyes wide open

The first time she saw Patrick, Danahé was at a country dance party and was given somewhat confusing explanations about him by a friend: “I think he’s blind.” Although it was true that, below his cowboy hat, Patrick had stitches sewn right into the cornea of his left eye, there was no doubt that he was looking at Danahé so insistently because he saw her very well.

Later, he told her his story: “When I was 13, my family and I were building an in-ground pool. I was hauling cement in a huge pail that was half full. I let it slip, and then the cement dust sprayed into my face, like flour.”

The chemical reaction was immediate, the burn extremely painful. Patrick used water to try rinsing out his eye, but the situation worsened. After 15 minutes, the cement had set. At the hospital, they noticed that the burn was deep. To remove the set cement, they had to remove a large portion of the cornea from his left eye. Fortunately, his right eye was only moderately affected. During a two-day stay in the hospital, he was confined to bed with devices continuously hydrating his eyes. He only heard sounds, the footsteps of people moving around in the hallway; he saw nothing. He was 13 years old and afraid.

In spite of it all, the doctors didn’t think that he had to immediately give up hope of regaining the sight in his left eye. They first wanted to monitor its ability to regenerate. Then it might be possible to transplant a cornea. However, his case was rather unusual: considering the severity of the damage caused by the cement, it was necessary to find a transplant very rich in cells.

That was how Patrick began his teenage years. In addition to the various drops that he had to put into his eye several times a day, he didn’t have three-dimensional vision because he saw with only one eye. Above all, he experienced episodes of very intense pain triggered by wind, dust, cold, light: “My eye was like raw flesh.” Also, because his right eye was compensating for the ineffectiveness of his left eye, he suffered terrible headaches.

He also had to deal with a lot of restrictions: he had to be careful when bending, he had to avoid banging his head at all costs. “I had to stop motocross, one of my passions,” he explained. “I also wanted to do rodeo: I couldn’t anymore.”

After a few years, he considered having his left eye replaced with a glass eye and move on to something else. Finally, one fine Tuesday morning when he was 18, he received a call. Héma-Québec had collected a cornea that perfectly met his very specific needs, and his eye was then ready to receive the transplant.

In addition to being uncertain, the engraftment process is long. For two years, he would have a dozen stitches on the cornea so that the graft and the wound would remain in constant contact and the eye could rebuild itself. However, the progress was encouraging!

“Every week it improved. Before the transplant, the vision in my left eye was 5%. Over time, that improved. Now I’m at over 80%. I was able to go to rodeo school!”

Several months after the transplant, he was also able to notice – in three dimensions! – a girl he liked a lot at the country dance party. Her name was Danahé. She was working at the CLSC, and she asked a friend who had been going to the dance parties longer than she had: “Who is he?” ».

It was Patrick. He was a forestry worker, and he would eventually like to have a farm, a horse, a family. He wasn’t blind at all, and Danahé had caught his eye – left or right, it no longer mattered. A few years later, they would indeed have a small farm, with cows, chickens, a horse, and a goat. Most importantly, they would have a little boy, Thomas, who would soon have a brother – and who already has a father who is living the life he wanted, with both eyes wide open.