VIDEO: Brave Durban toddler wows family as she inserts prosthetic eye
Little Lily Bowes was born with persistent hyperplastic primary vitreous (PHPV), a condition that affected her eye.
IT was a proud moment for Durban mother, Sheri-Leigh Baillache-Bowes when her two-year-old daughter decided to insert her prosthetic eye without any help.
Little Lily Bowes was born with persistent hyperplastic primary vitreous (PHPV), a condition that affected her eye.
“It’s a congenital anomaly. There is only two per cent chance of being born with this condition. She needed to have a surgery done when she was one month old. It was a very scary time for us. Unfortunately, after surgery, Lily had retinal detachment and had to have more surgery done. We were told she would have a blind eye and would need a prosthetic eye. Since then she has had 10 surgeries under anaesthetic. In 2019 we started going for prosthetic makeup,” explained Baillache-Bowes.
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Once she had her prosthetic eye, the next challenge for Lily was getting used to having her parents insert the eye every day.
“At first it was sore but she is used to it now. It is quite difficult to put the eye in. It’s not something natural that you are born knowing how to do. It’s uncomfortable for Lily- it’s a foreign object in her eye socket,” said Baillache-Bowes.
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Lily who turns three this week is already showing so much progress, said her proud mother.
“She has come such a long way. There were unhappy moments when we had to put the eye in, but now she is happily putting the eye in by herself. To be doing this on her own at three years old is amazing. We are very proud to see her become independent,” she said.
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