Miracle Eye Drug

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Video Transcript

Jenny Mickish
He says that his eye injection had better be painless

Verle Mickish
(laughs) My wife and I have been married for 50 years now..she's been my sweetheart all the way through

Narrator
Art professor Verle Mickish and his wife Ginny are looking at a visual history—cartoons he drew of his two year struggle to regain his sight. In 2003 his right eye developed wet age-related macular degeneration, in which abnormal blood vessels leak fluid into the back of the eye. The result can be permanent blindness.

Verle Mickish
I went into the bathroom to shave and I looked into the mirror and it was just a gray ghost looking back at me, I couldn't see my eyes, nose or anything.

Narrator
Both eyes had already been treated for dry macular degeneration, a more common form of the disease—which can produce a loss of central vision. To think of never painting again was devastating.

Verle Mickish
p begin="00:01:02.00" dur="00:00:09.00">I had retired in order to work on my children's books and to do illustrations and here this was passing very rapidly.

Doctor
And look way down and look left

Narrator
Macular degeneration is the leading cause of vision loss in adults over 60.

Verle Mickish
Macular degeneration you don't play around with, if you see wavy lines or you start to get this feeling of a cloud or it's getting grey, you need to get to your eye doctor.

Narrator
Verle was lucky. Out of 100 Emory Eye Center applicants, he was one of five chosen for a clinical trial of Lucentis, a new drug just approved by the FDA to treat the wet form of the disease. Each month for 2 years Verle received an injection directly into his eye—and miraculously his vision slowly returned.

Daniel F. Martin, MD
All done, you did great. Thank you. The really striking finding in both the Lucentis trials was that about 35 and 40 percent of patients actually had a 3-line visual acuity improvement. The best that had ever been seen prior to that was only 6 percent. Yes this looks very good… there's no fluid under the retina, no blood

Narrator
Verle doesn't take his good fortune for granted. He takes special vitamins, eats a lot of greens, protects his eyes from the sun, and for now, returns every six weeks for a check up.

Daniel F. Martin, MD
We don't know exactly what to expect because this is all brand new.

Narrator
And he has some advice for the rest of us aging baby boomers who may be facing macular degeneration:

Verle Mickish
Don't get negative. Negative causes other negative people to surround you. Positive attitude brings other positive people into your life and that's very important.

Narrator
For WebMD, I'm Sandee LaMotte.