The 70 Year Evolution of Vision Treatment: Jeanne’s inspirational story of life with low vision
By Jean McClellan
When I was born in l953, Bill Gates would not be born for another two years and Elon Musk for another 15 years. Nevertheless, there were many other brilliant men and women who were dreaming up inventions, making scientific discoveries, and creating opportunities and industries that never existed before.
Enter a little preemie named Jeanne born a month too early with retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) (underdeveloped eyes and detached retinas) and a collapsed lung. If born only decades earlier, I might have been expendable as treatments for preemies were either nonexistent or prohibitively expensive. Thankfully for me, science and medicine had progressed and options to preserve my life – and my sight – were available.
First of all, I needed to go into an incubator: a glass oxygen-tubed apparatus that enabled me to breathe. Primitive incubators had been used as early as the 1880s, but medicine scoffed at their use with human babies. In 1937 at the New York World’s Fair, a row of sleeping, thriving babies in incubators lined the boardwalk so gawkers could see that these glass wombs could actually save lives.
So, off I went into a top notch incubator donated to the hospital in my name by my generous uncle. But the life-saving device pulsed irregular arrythmic oxygen, which caused abnormal blood vessels, inadvertently fed by the gas, to further damage my already fragile eyes.
Enter scleral buckles - silicone belts actually sewn onto the eye to encircle it and keep it intact. The procedure had only been in the medical literature in l949, but because I was in a big hospital with well-trained doctors, I received the buckles on both eyes. The surgeon, Dr. Paul Cusick, was a skilled surgeon who saved my vision! But I have often wondered how much the surgery hurt, because I have heard in those days doctors did not fully understand how much pain babies actually felt. I hope I got enough anesthesia! Ouch!
Even as a very small child I wore very thick glasses. My mother says that one time a neighborhood kid exclaimed that I had gotten into someone’s glasses, but my mom calmly said, “No, those are Jeanne’s!”
I had to sit in the front of the classroom so I could see the chalkboard. I was self-conscious being right in front because my thick glasses, called “coke bottles” by some of the kids, made my eyes look like “bug eyes.” Nevertheless, I did not need any other accomodations to complete my school work.
I made regular visits to the eye doctor at the wonderful big Penobscot building in downtown Detroit. The best part was getting out of school early! As my doctor examined every corner of my eye with a blinding light, I counted the lines in his furrowed forehead. What else was I supposed to look at?
In the fifth grade I got into a rumble with my twin bother in the backyard, and as my head clunked the ground, one eye turned to weird dark lines and black spots. My mother and I rushed to the doctor to discover that I had torn the retina. The treatment? Patches over both eyes for weeks the last quarter of the school year. Because eyes work in tandem, when one moves so does the other, I had to keep them both immobilized for one to heal. Over time, the tear healed on its own.
Years later, in the l970s, when I was walking down Cass Avenue on Wayne State University’s campus where I attended college, I bent over the pick something up but as I stood erect the bottom half of my eye went dark. I could see over the top down the street, but I couldn’t see the sidewalk at my feet unless I turned my head down. I nervously continued to the bus, headed home and then again was whisked off to the doctor.
This time another new technology would have my back. In the 1960s and 1970s, thanks to the innovations from NASA and the Space Program, argon lasers were being used to seal retinal tears. I have had many laser surgeries over the years, but those first few were a little daunting. It is a painless and somewhat mystifying process. The first time the doctor was going to zap me, I remember thinking, “I hope he has good aim!”
Secondary to my primary retina disease, in the l980s, when I was in my early 30s, I developed a phenomena usually associated with getting old: cataracts. When the natural lens in the eye becomes clouded and inflexible, cataracts form. Looking through cataracts is like looking through wax paper.
But technology would rescue me yet again.
Recently, intraocular lens replacements had become quite commonplace and an easy outpatient procedure. I had both cataracts removed and replaced with these new lens implants almost with complete success. One eye had some complications and additional laser surgery had to be done to remove infection and inflammation. You can still see little black dots on my iris which are actually holes. One cataract is still in place and managing well, but the other has become dislodged and we don’t know what has happened to it! After all, I’m not sure they were intended to last over 30 years.
I have functioned with low vision all my life. I had a career and a wonderful marriage to my husband who just died in 2021. There are so many advocacy organizations now for people with disabilities and legislation in place to help us remain independent.
We live in a new Technology Age. I use an Orcam reader, which reads text to me. I use it to pay my bills so I don’t have to ask a sighted person to help me. I recently bought a new microwave and stove that are WiFi enabled so I can give them verbal commands (Ex: “Alexa, turn the oven to 350.”) One of my greatest traumas as a teenager was being unable to learn how to drive with my peers, but driverless cars are on the horizon! We have computers we can talk to and that will talk to us.
Thanks to brilliant and visionary men and women, like those at PRRF, and the wonderful services PRRF provides, we will always have new opportunities and innovations to aid us in living with low vision or blindness. We are blessed with pioneers who are not content with how things are, but are always exploring how things could be.
About the author:
Jeanne McClellan was born and raised in Royal Oak Michigan, got a master's degree in psychology, and worked for approximately 30 years as a counselor and social worker until she retired in 2009.