The Happy Pod: The injection that saved my sight
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This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed? In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed. But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss the first time? The History Bureau, Putin and the apartment bombs.
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This is The Happy Pod from the BBC World Service. I'm Valerie Sanderson and in this edition... I was just like, I'm not giving up. I refuse to accept that this is how it's going to be. There has to be something else we can do. There's got to be another way. It's incredible. It's life-changing. It's given me everything back. How one woman's determination led to a new treatment that's giving people their sight back. A new form of cancer therapy is extended to help people with an aggressive form of leukaemia. We are able to offer them years and potentially a cure. So this is, of course, revolutionising the way we tackle this cancer. A new doll designed to help understanding and acceptance of autism. It was brilliant.
It was such a proud moment. And just knowing that so many other children are going to have that exact same reaction and that so many little girls are going to be able to see themselves in a doll. Also, how one man's routine of having gumbo twice a day may have saved his life.
Plus... You can be an underdog in any story. You can achieve whatever you want to achieve. And things that seem completely impossible might just become a reality because that's exactly what happened on Saturday.
one of the biggest upsets in English footballing history. We start with a life-changing new treatment that's giving people their sight back. It involves injecting a low-cost water-based gel into the eyes of patients with a rare condition called hypotony, which can cause the eyeball to collapse and lead to blindness. In a trial, seven out of eight patients responded well to the treatment, which was developed at Moorfields Hospital here in London, after one patient challenged the doctors, who said they couldn't stop her going blind. Nikki Guy had already had the previously standard treatment of steroids and silicon oil injections in one eye, but they don't restore much vision. Nikki told our health correspondent Sophie Hutchinson that when her other eye was affected, she was determined not to give up.
I think I allowed myself to dwell maybe for half a day, a day. I was just like, no, this isn't it. Like, there has to be hope. I have to move forward. I can't sit still. I mean, there's no denying it was challenging. I couldn't see to get around my house. I found it incredibly tough to get outside. My husband's a chef, so he's really not around very much at all. I was the primary caregiver to our child. So it's things like that. We were living by the sea. How am I going to see my child if he runs off? He was quite young at that point. So there was so many things. Suddenly I couldn't cut a slice of cucumber or a bagel. So it was exceptionally hard. How did you cope? Determination, grit. I was just like, I'm not giving up.
I refuse to accept this is how it's going to be. So in your determination... What happened? The only reason I couldn't see was because the eye had kind of collapsed, the structure of the eye, the vision is still behind it. And it soon got to the point where it's like, this isn't tenable. And we had to have the conversation where the doctors thought that I would need to have silicone oil put into the left eye. When it became evident, it wasn't going to fix itself. Obviously, it hasn't given me my vision back in my right eye, the silicone oil. And that's when I said no. I was like... There has to be something else we can do. There has to be something else. There's got to be another way. And so what then happened?
Well, I'm incredibly fortunate that my doctor listened to me.
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