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‘I can see now!’: Blind woman regains sight after 23 years of darkness

Click to play video: '‘I can see now!’ Woman blind for 23 years regains sight after unrelated surgery'
‘I can see now!’ Woman blind for 23 years regains sight after unrelated surgery
WATCH ABOVE: A Florida woman is seeing again after 23 years of blindness, after an unrelated operation returned her vision – May 12, 2016

It’s being called a miracle.

A Florida woman who was blind for more than two decades is seeing again after an unrelated surgery returned her sight – a result doctors can’t explain.

“I always knew in my heart that God was going to let me have my eyesight back,” Mary Ann Powell-Franco told NBC2. “I knew it.”

Powell-Franco, who was colour-blind since birth, completely lost her ability to see in 1993 after a violent car accident left her with ruptured discs in her back.

While undergoing surgery to repair the injuries, she experienced another serious setback.

“He said, ‘Mary Ann, you had a stroke on that table,’” she remembered a surgeon telling her.

That’s when her world went dark.

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“Nothing,” she said. “I couldn’t see anything.”

Despite the reversal of fortune, Powell-Franco refused to let it slow her down.

“You can’t see, so what,” she remembered telling herself. “Get up, get moving and I did.”

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Over the next two decades she lived life the only way she knew how. She took up art, learned to draw and paint, and even jumped from a plane during a skydiving adventure.

But it was a fall in her home that would change her life all over again.

After re-injuring her spine, Powell-Franco found herself back on the operating table.

No one expected she would wake up to an even bigger surprise than the one she experienced 23 years earlier – not even her doctor.

“She’s my miracle patient,” Dr. John Afshar said. “She basically amazed me.”

When she awoke from the anesthesia, Powell-Franco was shocked.

“I said, ‘Doctor, guess what? I can see,’” she exclaimed. “Yes, I can see now!”

Not only did it allow her to see objects clearly, it also corrected her colour-blindness.

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“She was on cloud nine,” Afshar said. “If you could float, she would float.”

The procedure Afshar performed had nothing to do with Powell-Franco’s eyes, but instead aimed to straighten her spine.

“There’s really no explanation,” Afshar said.

He did offer one theory though.

“When we realigned [her spine], there’s a possibility we could have re-established blood flow,” Afshar explained.

He believes the blood could have restored previously dormant nerve cells that enable vision.

Now able to see, Powell-Franco is re-applying for her driver’s license.

“I feel like I’m in my 20s you know,” she said sitting in her niece’s car. “I’m ready to go.”

Next up, she’s planning a trip to Michigan to visit friends and family, and to finally get a look at grandchildren she’s never seen before.

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