Eyes for you
Lauren Hauxwell, 31, from Nottingham, will stop at nothing to make her girl feel normal.
As I watched my three-yearold daughter perfect her latest gymnastics move, I was bursting with pride. ‘Well done love!’ I beamed. Myah has always been so energetic – going to dance classes, gymnastic classes, and bounding through the house whenever she gets a chance.
I’ve always done my best to encourage her to be herself, as Myah didn’t exactly have a normal start to life.
She was born with a rare condition called microphthalmia, meaning one of her eyes didn’t form properly, and only the pupil grew.
It means she is completely blind in that eye.
When she was born, I held her in my arms, and
all I could see was a beautiful baby girl.
Even with one eye, she was perfect.
Soon after, I pushed for her to have a prosthetic eye fitted.
So doctors treated her with an ‘expander’ – it stretched the eye socket to avoid any facial deformity.
In her first year, Myah underwent seven surgeries, and was eventually fitted with an artificial eye.
Growing up, it didn’t seem to bother her at all. She would even play with it, taking it outside and hiding from me. It was hilarious. But as she grew, the eye became too small for her. ‘It will take at least a year before she can get a new prosthetic,’ an NHS specialist told me. Myah deserves more, I thought. So I contacted a private surgeon, who
was so touched by Myah’s story that he offered to help us out.
He fitted her with another prosthetic, but within a year, she had outgrown that, too.
By the time she was three, she’d had four prosthetic eyeballs, which all had become too small for her.
The eye she has in now is weighing her face down, which is making it deformed.
But if she takes it out, the eye starts to close back up again.
Going back to her surgeon, he suggested something called a dermis fat graft. ‘We can create an eye socket for her using fat from her stomach,’ he explained. ‘After the operation, we will put a clean shell over her eye until she can get a new prosthetic eye made,’ he went on. It won’t be 100 percent perfect, as doctors have to take exactly the right amount of fat, and this can be affected when she puts on or loses weight in the future. But this pioneering procedure comes at a price. I have to raise £5,500 to have it done, and I’m trying anything I can to raise funds for her. I’ve started up a Gofundme page to help with this. I just want Myah to have the chance to have an eye, whether it works or not. I’ve never wanted her to feel like she was different or weird, and I will always strive to tell her how stunning she is. She’s never let her condition stop her, and that’s something I’m so amazingly proud of. To make a donation, go to www.gofundme.com/myahssurgery-eye-for-an-eye.
She would hide her eyeball!