A 2-year-old girl from Santa Catarina, Brazil, can now see again after a successful operation at the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute in Miami on March 17.
Nicolly Pereira was deaf and blind, born with pediatric glaucoma. She could not see light and had undergone several surgeries in her home country, to no effect. Daiana, Nicolly’s mother, wrote about her daughter’s condition on a Facebook post. Her story went viral, catching the attention of a Miami resident who got in touch with the Jackson Health Foundation’s International Kids Fund (Wonderfund). The organization worked with the Kevin Garcia Foundation, raising over $17,000 for Nicolly’s surgery.
Dr. Alana Grajewski performed the child’s operation, which lasted three hours. She wasn’t sure of the surgery’s chances of success. She says, “When she arrived, I felt I had made a mistake, because normally when they have the children arrive, they have some sort of vision that’s measurable. We have a technician look at them initially and…they wrote down that Nicolly couldn’t see anything, not even a light.”
Despite Grajewski’s doubts, Nicolly came through with her vision restored. “It was amazing. Everything came together. The first day after surgery she had eye patches on both eyes. [Nicolly was] smiling ear to ear and singing. I loved the feeling of first seeing her mom’s face. That just moved me so much,” she relates.
Then all of a sudden, she realized: ‘Oh my gosh, that’s my mom.’ And her mother could tell the recognition. It was just one of those moments — priceless.
As for the toddler’s deafness, doctors within the University of Miami’s health care system found that Nicolly had water in her inner ears. All the doctors had to do was drain her ears for 30 minutes, and she could hear again.
Nicolly wears glasses, as she is near-sighted. But she can now hear, see and stand on her own. Her eyesight is adjusting because her eyes are healing; she will require good follow-up care and is expected to return to Bascom Palmer in a year.
“The only word that can be used to describe the feeling is ‘God,'” Daiana told the Miami Herald. “My daughter is free now. She now shines more than before. She has now become a reference for people who didn’t believe in miracles.”
