A man whose eye was left “more like a raisin than an eyeball” after a devastating car accident has had his sight partially restored following eight meticulous operations.
Chris Hurd, 37, from Basingstoke, Hampshire, sustained the horrific injury when a taxi windscreen shattered during a city break in Budapest, sending a shower of glass into his eye.
The crash also left Mr Hurd with a broken neck, multiple fractures, and severe damage to both eyes. Doctors initially informed him that the injured eye would be lost, making the partial restoration of his vision a remarkable medical achievement.
His eyelids were torn away, his iris – the coloured part of the eye – has disappeared and he had a detached retina – the thin layer of tissue at the back of the eye which processes light and converts it into the electrical signals that the brain interprets as images.
There were large puncture wounds, leaving Mr Hurd, who works in sales, with a gaping hole in his right eye.
Thanks to a series of intricate procedures Mr Hurd’s eye was rebuilt and while his good eye “does all the heavy lifting” he now can use the injured eye for depth and spatial awareness, enabling him to drive.
The accident happened in 2023 while he was on holiday with his fiancee Katie Plimmer and friend, Gabby Thind.
He was in the front passenger seat of a taxi which was T-boned by a drunk driver in a van who drove through a red light, sending the taxi into a spin which in turn knocked over a cyclist and a pedestrian.
“I can remember it like it was yesterday,” he said.
“I had a broken neck with three large fractures going through the top of my spine towards the scull.
“One of the fractures could have been a complete game-changer… I could have been paralysed.
“There was significant damage from the glass – a shower of glass went straight into the side of my face and a lot of pieces directly in my eye. The eye so was badly damaged.”
His fiancee had bits of glass embedded in her skin which needed to be removed and their friend damaged the tendons in her hand.
Mr Hurd passed out and was cut from the car by emergency services before being rushed to hospital.
He was put in an induced coma for a number of days and surgeons performed a procedure to save his eyelids and remove glass from the eye.
A second procedure was also performed but was not a success and Mr Hurd was told that it was likely he would lose his eye.
“I woke up from my coma and there was a lady saying ‘we have done the best that we could but there is a high chance you are going to lose your eye’.
“So that was quite a shock, it was the last thing I expected to hear. It was quite an emotional time as you can imagine.”
When he was well enough to return to England, Mr Hurd went straight to the hospital where he was referred privately to Professor Roger Shimizu Wong, consultant ophthalmic surgeon at the London Clinic.
At this point his eye was “more like a raisin than an eyeball”.
“He got me into surgery pretty quickly and luckily it was a great success, he was able to reattach the retina, remove the blood, and reattach the globe – the front part of the eye – and stabilise the puncture wounds,” Mr Hurd said.
“That was just the very beginning of the journey, unfortunately.
“I needed another surgery for the retina and then another to put in a fake iris – a silicone iris that he was able to put into the eye.
“So I have fake colour in my eye. It looks really real but you can tell slight differences, it’s a little bit lighter than my actual eye.”
Mr Hurd then needed another procedure to replace a filter in the eye which cleans the eye.
“That was actually from a donor – someone who had unfortunately passed away,” he added.
“It has just been a long, long healing time, it has been a very long journey.
“I can see shapes and colour and I have peripheral vision. The good eye does all the heavy lifting.
“Considering how badly damaged it was it is a miracle that I have even got that.”
Professor Wong said: “Whenever you have a ruptured globe it is not good news, the first thing I would tell the patient is: ‘there’s a chance that you will lose that eye’.
“That’s how bad it is.
“And so if we come out of it, and he keeps the eye, that’s great, and down, further down the line, you get some vision, that’s even better.”
He said that Mr Hurd presented with no vision at all, and the first operation helped to “tidy things up”.
“The globe was still leaking,” he said.
“It was actually a bit more like a raisin, rather than an eyeball, than a globe. So that was repaired.”
Professor Wong, who specialises in vitreo retinal diseases and ocular trauma as well as other eye conditions such as macular diseases and complicated cataract surgery, went on: “That was the first step, which is basically making a globe a globe… to repair the rupture, let the eye settle.
“And then we planned to do a series operations. You kind of need to do it one step at a time.”
Initial work was done to “keep the globe intact, pressure normal and the retina in place”, he said.
“Once that was achieved, then we start to look at the icing on the cake. Before that, I was just trying to see if there was a cake.”
He added: “I’ve known Chris for a little while now, I’ve seen him quite a few times and to see him change from when we first met, and then through the multiple operations and seeing where he is now, and what he’s able to do, is fulfilling.
“It’s great to see people be able to get back to a normal-ish lifestyle.”
Mr Hurd and Ms Plimmer plan to tie the knot after he finishes his rehabilitation following the accident.
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