8-Week-Old Boy Born Blind Receives Cornea Transplants

An 8-week-old Everett boy who was born blind has been twice blessed by the gift of sight this holiday season.

Joel Lloyd received a cornea transplant last week to correct a rare defect in his left eye. This week, doctors discovered his right eye was as bad as his left.

“When they looked at his eye, they determined that the only way he was going to have optimal vision was to do another transplant,” said Donna Oiland, director of the Lions Eye Bank at the University of Washington Medical Center.

So doctors on Friday performed another transplant, giving little Joel two new corneas and an opportunity to see out of both eyes.

“There are angels on this kid’s shoulders, that’s for sure,” said his mother, Bonnie King. “He’s pulled off a couple of miracles.”

Last week, the Lions Eye Bank in Seattle started a nationwide search for a child’s cornea. The search ended in the Midwest, where the family of a 6-year-old who had drowned agreed to donate a cornea to Joel.

The second cornea came from another child in the Midwest, a 2-year-old who died suddenly on Christmas day of a congenital heart condition.

“I can’t imagine what those parents are going through,” King said Friday. “That they could give us a gift like this under those circumstances is just extraordinary. We are both incredibly grateful and thankful that Joel got this opportunity.”

There is a 20- to 50-percent chance that Joel’s body will reject one or both of the transplanted corneas, said Dr. Audrey Talley, the cornea-transplant surgeon at Northwest Eye Center who performed both operations.

“If he does not reject the corneas, then I’d say he has a good chance of developing normal vision,” she said.

Talley defines normal vision as car-driving vision or in the range of 20-40 to 20-60.

“But there is nothing definite in the way of knowing how much vision Joel will regain; and most likely he will need some form of visual correction - contact lens or eye glasses.”

Joel was babbling away with his father, Mark Lloyd, only two hours after Friday’s surgery.

“All of this is amazing,” King said.

“This is a baby who was born blind, and he couldn’t see anything until a week ago. But on Christmas it was very obvious to all of us that he could see the lights on our Christmas tree.

“There is no greater gift that we could have been given.”