Contacts Help Blind See

May 2 -- It's hard to tell that Joe Zienowicz is blind. He works as a security supervisor for Federal Express during the day, drives himself to work and back, and in his spare time, enjoys playing golf.

But without the special contact lenses he wears, Zienowicz is completely blind. The only telltale sign is the baseball cap he must wear at all times to protect his eyes from glare.

Always an athlete, Zienowicz developed tennis elbow in 1996. A minor illness, but a rare, almost deadly reaction to the anti-inflammatory drug he was given damaged his corneas so severely that he was robbed of his sight.

"I woke up one day in the hospital and I had no vision," he explains. "For 17 months I sat on the couch listening to books on tape. I did over 200 books while I was sitting there as a couch potato. It was like being a vampire — couldn't see, couldn't do anything."

Imagine a life reduced to the sofa — no work, no sports, no hope. But the thing Joe missed the most was seeing his wife Susan's face.

"Let me just have a glimpse of my wife's face for a brief second, just in case I never, ever see her again," he recalls thinking.

Promising Solution

Doctors told Joe he should give up hope, until he met Dr. Perry Rosenthal, founder of the Boston Foundation for Sight.

For more than 30 years, it has been Rosenthal's mission to do what seemed like the impossible — to help the blind see. He's doing it with the Boston scleral lens, which sits on the surface of the cornea.

"The cornea is like the lens of a camera, if the surface isn't perfectly smooth, the eyes can't focus even with the strongest glasses," says Rosenthal.

Damaged and diseased corneas are rough and uneven in surface and that's the problem.

Rosenthal knew he had to recreate a healthy cornea. He knew he couldn't do it surgically, because even corneal transplants cannot get the surface perfectly smooth.

So he developed a large, porous, plastic lens that would fit over the cornea without touching it.