Woman who can’t keep her eyes open
They clamp shut for hours . . . but now Botox offers a cure
IT SOUNDS like a scene from a horror movie, but for Pauline Williams it is an everyday reality.
The mother of three suffers from a rare neurological condition which prevents her keeping her eyes open. Several times a day, they clamp shut – and she is powerless to open them for hours at a time.
Custom-made glasses with special wire clamps for her eyelids failed to help, so doctors came up with a new way to cure the problem – Botox.
The 63-year-old has been put on a special course of injections to dampen the muscle strength in her eyelids. She has also been prescribed Parkinson’s drugs to control the eye spasms.
Mrs Williams’ condition was so severe that her GP advised her to register as functionally blind and use a white stick.
eventually she was diagnosed with Meige syndrome – a neurological problem in which face muscles forcibly contract. It made her eyes hypersensitive to light or wind. ‘They could shut at any point – some days I could hardly open them at all,’ said Mrs Williams, from Settle in North Yorkshire. ‘There was no knowing when that would happen and it was like a paralysis – I had to physically pull my eyelids open and hold them there.’
The glasses were made with metal clamps to hook on to her eyelids and keep them open. ‘It was dreadful and so uncomfortable but I was desperate,’ she said.
even after Mrs Williams was diagnosed, it took months of appointments before Professor Bernie Chang, consultant ophthalmic surgeon at Optegra eye Hospital Yorkshire, suggested the six-weekly Botox injections. After months of perfecting the dose, she began to recover.
‘I will have to keep taking the drugs and the Botox for the rest of my life – and I just hope I do not become resistant to it,’ she said. ‘I am back at work, I have my driving licence back, and have my life back.’
Mrs Williams’ form of Meige syndrome is called blepharospasm and affects 20 in every million people worldwide. She also has lid apraxia – a linked condition which hinders her ability to reopen her eyes.