Clint's Eye Gets Poked Out

Bart’s Got Nothin’ On Me

I guess these days it’s cool to have a disability – it must be the governments laws!

My friend and SEO mentor, Bary Gibby had a tragic accident when he was just a young whipper-snapper aged nine. You see, he was playing with a bomb and either didn’t throw it or failed get the fuse put out in time, he said that he failed to put the fuse out. I’d have just thrown it. It resulted in a pretty gruesome, and I’ll bet super painful, accident.

Now to My Story!

I’ve tried to include as much detail as I can remember. When was nearly the same age, in just my ninth year. My friend, Colby Powell, and I were building a wooden raft to take to Lake Meade (big plans for some pretty little guys), near Las Vegas, Nevada, my hometown. Our building materials were a bag of nails, two wooden palettes, a few 2x4s, some rope and a whole bunch of hope!

My first task was to separate two of the 2x4s that were nailed together with a huge rusty nail (I think they nail has gotten bigger each time I tell this story, as though it were a fish, and this was a fish story). I began by placing a hammers claw between the two pieces of wood, attempting to use it as a wedge, I started to hammer on it with another hammer. As I did so, one of the hammers splintered into several small pieces. One of these small hammer pieces decided to go through my poor little nine year old eyeball, missing my optic nerve by one tiny millimeter and destroying my macula (the focal point of vision).

The first question I normally get asked after telling this much of my story is, “Did it hurt?”

Its weird, but I have no recollection of any pain at the time of the accident. I think its because nearly all of the nerves that go to the eye are for vision not for sensing pain, or it could have been the shock.

The piece of hammer that penetrated my eyeball was very small, but it did a lot of damage. On its way through the eye it tore some of the tiny iris muscles, caused a cataract to form on my optic lens and contaminated the vitreous humor (the thick liquid inside the eyeball).

While I was hitting on hammer it suddenly felt like something hit me in the face, confused I looked up and noticed spots in my vision, later I would learn that these were blood spots. Without delay I headed inside to tell my Dad that I was seeing the spots. He and I hopped in the car and went to see my mom who was working down the street my elementary school. They both then took me to our local family doctor in Las Vegas who didn’t see anything out of the ordinary other than a small bit of fiber protruding from the eye. He recommended that we visit an ophthalmologist, we did so with good haste. We had a family friend who was a such a doctor up in my other home town of St. George, Utah [map]. So we hopped back in the car and drove the two hours to pay Dr. Ronald Snow a visit.

Mental note, don’t hit hammers together.

Dr. Snow, looked me over and noted that the only way that the small bit of fiber would be present was that something had penetrated the eye. He then took some x-rays of my head from the front and from the side (I’m still trying to find them, so no pictures yet). The x-rays revealed the small speck of metal directly behind my right eye lodged in the interstitial tissues between the eye and brain. [not to make light of the situation but I couldn’t find my x-rays so I used Homer instead, properly annotated]

The good doctor told us to get back to Las Vegas immediately and have the eye examined by Dr. Richard Simon. As a specialist in eye diseases, his office terrified having a plethora of various eye diseases hanging on his wall and a there was a video playing that discussed the various diseases of the eye. I can distinctly remember not being too scared about this whole ordeal until I saw those awful pictures hung on his office wall, as artwork.

Dr. Simon noted that the eye had been penetrated as well and told us what to expect. First thing was that a cataract would start to form on the lens, a natural response to being severely damaged. Next, the vitreous humor would start to harden and shrink. When the shrinking begins the retina will start to detach from the wall of the inner eye.

We had to time eye surgery just right so as to coincide with when the retina was just starting to detach, about 10 days after the accident. I remember going to Wendy’s to get a frosty after my daily visit to Dr. Simon’s office for a checkup!

Image credit: Eye Consultant

When the detachment started, I was immediately off to surgery. We were in surgery for several hours while Dr. Simon attempted to repair as much of the eye as possible. He moved the hardening vitreous humor and the now cataract lens. The lens was left out and vitreous humor was replaced with a sterile saline (salt) solution.

Because the metal fragment took out my central vision my brain attempted to compensate by turning my eye inward so I became cross-eyed in that one eye. The pupil also became malformed due to the tearing of the iris muscles and some tissue from the lens muscles that had become attached to it.

So as you can imagine with the non-normal look about me I was the brunt of a quite a few stares and jokes growing up. As humans we are expert at noticing imperfect patterns!

The Next Stage

While I was serving a two year mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and living in Evans, Georgia [map] I began to notice that just about every afternoon my vision in the bad eye would go completely gray, not the blurry peripheral vision I was used to. I visited with a neighbor who was an optometrist and he looked me over and, not being trained for this type of thing, didn’t find anything “extra” wrong. He referred my to Dr. Ranjit S. Dhaliwal a world renown ophthalmologist who practiced in August, Georgia, of which Evans was a suburb.

Dr. Dhaliwal was a real neat fellow, very expert and professional. He closely examined the eye determined that my retina had partially detached and was flapping around inside my eye! Six days later I was in surgery yet again (surgery #2). The surgery lasted nearly 8 hours, when complete Dr. Dhaliwal was very satisfied with the repair work, having repaired the retina, replaced the saline solution with silicon oil and repaired the iris muscles.

This surgery was a lot more precise than my first surgery that was performed way back in the eighties. Current technology allowed for a micro-surgery and no whole eye incision this time, the surgery before had to be stitched up with six very large and uncomfortable sutures.

I Could See, I Could See, I Could See!

About three days after surgery he removed the eye patch and I could see out of the eye, albeit not perfect, but I could just barely make out faces again! I was pretty excited to say the least. During surgery, Dr. Dhaliwal injected a bubble of air to help the eye to stabilize the inner eye pressure. It was very weird to see the air bubble floating around inside my eye. I could move my head and the bubble would bobble around. About a week after the surgery the eye was loosing pressure to quickly so the good doctor need to put more air inside. So, like a flat tire that needed more are he inserted a large needle into the side of my eye and pumped in a small air bubble. I didn’t hurt much but it was one of the most uncomfortable sensations I can ever remember feeling.

Two weeks passed and my vision was steadily becoming more clear, then suddenly the vision went all gray again. I was pretty sad about as we rushed back to Dr. Dhaliwal where he determined that the eye was healing to quickly and that an inordinate amount of scar tissue was forming. A couple of days later I was in surgery again (#3), this time for another eight hours. After surgery Dr. Dhaliwal informed me that there just wasn’t much retina left and that I would likely not see out of the eye ever again. He also told me that if the accident were to happen today that he would have been able to repair the eye to 90-95% of normal!

Returning Home To Find A Permanent Solution

I finished out the last year of my two year mission and returned home. I returned again to Dr. Ronald Snow of St. George, where we discussed my options for a prosthetic eye. I discovered that two of three criteria would have to be met before he could recommend the prosthetic procedure. Lack of vision, chronic pain or severe cosmetic defect needed to be satisfied before the procedure could be carried out. I had all three! After the last surgery performed by Dr. Dhaliwal the eye never really recovered all they way and caused me quite a bit of daily pain.

Dr. Snow referred me to Dr. Richard Anderson, possibly the worlds best cosmetic eye surgeon. It’s interesting that wherever I go one of the very best eye doctors is always near by, thanks to God for that! After meeting with Dr. Anderson I decided to go forward with the partial eye-ectomy (surgery #4). The procedure consisted of removing the inner eye, retina, iris and the cornea and leaving in place a ridged thermoplastic shell filled with a saline solution which my sclera was stitched around. If you look closely at the x-rays below you can just make out the side profile of the plastic shell (click for larger versions).

I had to wear a clear plastic prosthesis for month while the eye healed after the invasive surgery, it looked pretty icky and talk about some funny looks! These pictures were taken this afternoon (28 June 2008).

On the same day that my sweetheart and I moved to Salt Lake City where I planned to attend the University of Utah I met with the absolute best ocularists in the business, Richard Caruso to be fitted for a custom ocular prosthesis. Here is a video clip from the Science Channel series, How It’s Made. The video clip does a great job of detailing what creating a prosthetic eye is like.

If you’ve ever been to an orthodontist and had your mouth pumped full of that paste stuff you’ll know what if feels like to have the same stuff pumped into your eye cavity so the ocularist can make a mold to begin the process of forming my prosthesis.

Mr. Caruso says that my prosthetic eye moves better than any other eye he has created and he is always taken aback with how green my eyes are!

How Do You Like Me Now?

Its been a little over eight years since I’ve the eye-ectomy and I have not regretted the decision. Gone is the pain. Gone are the funny looks. Gone are the stares. Most people that meet me today have know idea that my eye is a fake!

This is a picture of Tasha and me last December (2007) at the Omniture Christmas Party. As you can’t see I look pretty normal now, that is, aside from the rest of my face. Tasha sure makes me look good though!