Contacts Help Blind See

May 2, 2002 -- 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.

Artificial tears are placed inside the lens to protect the damaged cornea. It seems so simple, but the concept is groundbreaking. Patients with corneal blindness can achieve 20/20 vision.

"Even though the corneas can be very distorted and irregular, when light comes in through the lens, it only sees the smooth surface, the irregular surface is hidden by the fluid," explains Rosenthal.

The contacts are designed to help people with corneal damage and diseases. They can also help people who have already had corneal transplants yet have not achieved perfect vision.

Life-Changing Moment

Rosenthal used to make the lenses by hand. Now his team custom makes each one by computer at the Boston Foundation for Sight. This is the one and only location in the United States to create them.

Nearly 400 people now wear these contacts, which cost $5,500 for a pair.

It's estimated that up to 50,000 people in the United States, and hundreds of thousands worldwide could regain their sight from these.

Since Rosenthal runs a non-profit foundation, he doesn't turn anyone away if they can't pay. He subsidizes 60 percent of the patients he sees.

For Zienowicz, the miracle took only two weeks. His wife, Susan, remembers the life-changing moment.

"He put the lenses in and immediately he looked at me at said, 'Oh my God, I can see,'" she recalls. "And we went running outside and down the street and he started reading streets signs. The feeling inside from being so low to so high, it just gives me shivers to think about how that feeling was. I just couldn't stop smiling.

Zienowicz loves staring at her, wearing his lenses every moment that he's awake. They have given him his life back.

"When I take them out at the end of the day, I say, thank you — I just had a wonderful day," he says.

For more information on the lenses, visit www.bostonsight.org