Mum sees son’s first day at school after having two eye transplants

'All those things you take for granted – a child’s first smile, first steps, first day at school - I wouldn’t have been able to see any of them'

A loving mum has said she wouldn’t have witnessed her son’s first day at school without two transplants that saved her sight.

Laura Grady, 38, didn’t think she would see Noah walk through the school gates because her vision had deteriorated so badly she could only see grey ‘shadows and silhouettes’.

She had two cornea transplants, using lenses donated by two complete strangers.

She said: ‘Without a cornea transplant, my sight would be entirely gone now, I’d be effectively blind and my life would be completely different.

‘All those things you take for granted – a child’s first smile, first steps, first day at school – I wouldn’t have been able to see any of them without those two people agreeing to be donors.’

Instead, Laura watched Noah start school and said she was ‘like a big wet blanket’.

Laura, who lives in Greenwich, London, with Noah and his dad Justin, had transplant operations in 2005 and 2015, after contracting an unknown condition when she was 21.

She said: ‘I would wake up every morning and my eyesight would be cloudy – not clear blurry, but grey cloud so I couldn’t really see anything.

‘For the first couple of years, it would clear by 9am and I could go to work as normal.

‘Although I thought something wasn’t right, it went away so quickly it didn’t really bother me.’

There was no history of eye conditions in her family, so Laura thought nothing more of it.

But her condition was spotted when she applied for a job and a routine test picked up a scratch on her right eye.

It turned out to be a cluster of cells that gradually grew across her eye, with Laura eventually losing her sight.

Pathology results were inconclusive and, although they suspected a virus, doctors could not pinpoint what might be causing the cell growth.

She said: ‘It got to the point where it was taking longer and longer to clear, and as my vision got worse my eyes stopped adjusting to darkness so I struggled to see anything in low light.

‘I couldn’t judge distances very well either, so even trying to open a door handle or put a lid back on a pen became really difficult for me.’

In 2005 the grey cloud in her left eye stopped clearing. She went back to hospital and was put on a cornea transplant list and within a few months, a match was found.

Laura said: ‘The next morning, when the protective shield was taken off to change the dressing, I opened my eye for the first time. It was very painful, but already I could notice a difference in my vision.

‘Rather than just a mass of grey, seeing shadows and silhouettes, I could see colour which was incredible.’

Within a few weeks, all the blurring disappeared but almost a decade later, while pregnant with Noah, she noticed the cloudiness had returned.

The hospital suggested another transplant, but Laura delayed until after she had her son and breastfed him for six months. She went ahead with a second partial graft in her right eye in 2015.L

Laura said: ‘I don’t think I realised how much sight I’d lost until I got it back.

‘Having the transplants has given me a greater appreciation of everything because I’m aware of what I could have lost and I realise how lucky I’ve been.

‘The decision those people made to donate their corneas might not have saved my life in the same way that lungs, kidneys or a heart would have, but it’s saved the life that I live today. It’s given me all the things I do and see with my son and I’m just incredibly grateful for that.’