Olivia Eafano, a 16-year-old teen from Georgia, has successfully recovered from blindness caused by glaucoma over ten years ago, NVO News reported.
The physician who attended to her, Dr. Stephen Foster, said Eafano was lucky because the disease was treated while it was still in its early stages.
Eafano's ordeal started when she was only five years old. While watching her favorite television show, she was stunned when her vision suddenly went dark and she could not see anything.
She called for her mother who immediately took her to a local hospital. Upon checking on her condition, doctors diagnosed her with uveitis and glaucoma. Uveitis is a condition caused by an inflammation in the eye's mid section.
Glaucoma, on the other hand, causes fluid pressure to rise in the eye. If left untreated, it could lead to partial or complete blindness.
"Glaucoma are a group of diseases where there is progressive damage to the optic nerve, which is the pathway that takes vision from the eye back to the brain," Dr. Jeffrey Schultz, the director New York City's glaucoma service at Montefiore Medical Center explained to ABC News.
"It is usually but not always associated with increased pressure in the eye," he added.
Due to Eafano's condition, her family brought her to Foster, the CEO and president of the Massachusetts Eye Research & Surgery Institution.
According to Foster, glaucoma is a dangerous disease due to its lack of symptoms.
"People generally lose their peripheral vision first, and then the damage slowly marches centrally," he told ABC News. "It's often called the 'sneaky thief' of vision because many people have no symptoms until it reaches the central vision."
Fortunately, Eafano was able to get the right treatment on time. After several years of going through four surgeries and various procedures aimed at reversing the damage in her eyes, she was able to regain her vision.
