In the United States, a little girl, named Wrenley Ice, was born without eyes due to an extremely rare genetic disease.
This is a news item that seems difficult to believe. And yet: Wrenley Ice was born without eyes. The little girl suffers from a rare disease, which only affects 30 people worldwide.
A baby born without eyes
Wrenley’s parents had no idea that their newborn had such an illness. While they had fought to have this child – they suffered from infertility – and the doctors had assured that the fetus was “in good health“, at birth, the little girl does not open her eyes.
“I noticed she wasn’t opening her eyes, so I asked the nurse what was happening“, says Taylor, the young mother.
At this precise moment, the nurse wants to be reassuring. She explains to him that newborns don’t necessarily open their eyes immediately after birth (the intense light bothers them).
Several minutes pass, however, and the little girl still does not open her eyes. The pediatrician then decides to examine Wrenley Ice.
“He stopped the exam, looking at us in amazement.“. “Your daughter has no eyes”, he revealed.
“You mean they’re small?“, asks the young mother. “No, they are not there”, indicates the doctor, according to the media KFS-TV.
“I just burst into tears because I just couldn’t fully understand what it meant at that moment”, said the mother, in shock.
The little girl suffers from an extremely rare illness
Following this announcement, the young parents decide to go to a pediatric hospital. After 9 long days of waiting, they discovered that their daughter had an extremely rare genetic disease – congenital anophthalmia – a rare malformation characterized by an absence of ocular tissue and optic nerve.
The geneticist in charge of the little girl, Dr. Jenssen, says that the SOX2 gene is to blame in Wrenley’s case. Illness was therefore inevitable.
“There is nothing the mother or father did to cause this. Nor was there anything they could have done to prevent the disease. It’s totally random. Some patients with the same genetic modification have an affected eye, which may be completely absent as in Wrenley’s case, or simply smaller, whereas in this case the“Both eyes are affected and completely absent,” he explained, before adding that it was possible that the disease had an impact on the “intellectual and physical development“de Wrenley.
Wrenley to undergo surgery
Although the little girl is and will remain blind, Wrenley must undergo surgery to increase the size of her eye sockets. The installation of tiny ocular prostheses indeed promotes the growth of bones and tissues around the orbits; thus allowing the face to grow harmoniously.
To cover all these costs, Wrenley’s family decided to launch an online fundraiser (GoFundMe).
