Accident Restores Sight To Eye

A childhood accident blinded Vern Harryman in one eye. Five decades later, another accident has given it back.

“This is truly a Christmas miracle,” he says.

Actually, the restoration of sight in his left eye started the week before Thanksgiving, when he turned to talk to a friend and walked into a post at a shopping mall, he said Monday.

The sudden jolt dislodged the damaged and opaque lens that had blocked his vision, letting it slip to the side.

Now a contact lens takes part of the function of the damaged natural lens, and on Saturday doctors gave him trifocal glasses. The combination has given him 20/40 vision, said Harryman, who turns 63 today.

Harryman’s left eye was blinded when he was 10 by dirt thrown in his face while playing with friends.

Doctors told him the accidental jarring shook the opaque lens out of its place inside his left eye, allowing light to reach the undamaged retina where images are turned into data for the brain.