Children who have lost an eye due to cancer or a traumatic accident can now have a bespoke prosthetic eye made as a result of campaigning work by parents and by a leading children’s cancer doctor.
Once a month, UK-based consultant ocularist Dr John Pacey-Lowrie spends a week in Dublin and, in that time, he is able to measure, make and fit prosthetic eyes that allow children to look “normal” and enjoy life without attracting stares.
One such child is 15-year-old Aaron Whelan from Dublin. He lost the sight in his eye in May of last year when he was playing golf with his friends and got hit with a golf club.
Just three days later he was told his eye was permanently damaged and he lost the sight in it. He was left with what looked like a shrunken and closed eye.
Aaron has been teased about it and was constantly asked by people what had happened to him; the accident meant that the pressure inside the eye was lost and it shrank completely.
“I felt different because of it,” he says.
Now with his prosthetic eye, which Pacey-Lowrie made right in front of him, he says, with a broad smile, “I would like to go swimming.”
The clinic Pacey-Lowrie runs is based at Child Vision in Drumcondra, Dublin 9, and the initial €40,000 needed to set it up was raised by parents of children under the care of Prof Michael O’Keeffe of Children’s University Hospital, Temple Street, and by a private donor.
Fittings sent to the UK
O’Keeffe says that before this, prosthetic eyes were available to public patients but the eyes were made based on a fitting taken from the eye socket “which was sent to the UK. If the fitting was not correct, it had to be returned to the UK to be adjusted.
“Because they were not custom-made for the individual patients, it led to problems such as chronic discharge and conjunctival erosion.”
O’Keeffe says the cosmetic appearance “will be markedly improved as the prosthesis is customised for each individual.
It will reduce the constant annoyance and discomfort of dealing with a discharge from the socket.”
Six-year-old Jack Teeling from Mornington, Co Meath, lost his eye due to cancer and he has had a series of problems with incorrectly fitting prosthetic eyes.
His mother, Gráinne Teeling, was thrilled to hear that a bespoke service was available.
“Jack had so many problems last year with his eye. There were recurring infections and we found out that a badly fitted prosthetic [had] caused the majority of them.
“Having the new service now means he is having a new eye to fit his socket. It is the correct colour and he has less time off school, less time having steroids and medication, and it eliminates having to have an operation or procedure to fix the sore eye.”
Close impression
Pacey-Lowrie has been an ocularist for nearly 40 years and says he begins the four-day process by taking a close impression of the eye.
From this a cast is made in plaster and into that goes a special wax material which he then carves into the same shape as the remaining healthy eye.
When that is done, he adds what looks like the iris and cornea and then the eye goes through a manufacturing process similar to that for dentures or crowns.
Finally, he paints it the same colour as the remaining eye.
“This is actually quite unique. It is bespoke ocular prosthetics: this is not ‘one size fits all’, because each and every one is individually handmade and painted.”
While there is a private clinic in the Blackrock Clinic, Pacey-Lowrie deals with mainly public patients and he visits Ireland once a month.
Like Jack Teeling, many of his patients have endured surgery and chemotherapy.
For Gráinne and the other parents, having this service means that “Now people won’t notice anything about his eye unless I or Jack feel like telling them, so he blends in with his friends and so he is not any different.
“I am happy to know that people are not staring at [my son] when he is going down the street.”
