From a conversational distance you would never guess which eye Sumaiya Maria lost as a toddler. The 26-year-old from Bangledesh was injured playing with a piece of barbed wire when she lost her vision, but doctors managed to save what remained of her eye.
Until she walked into a Burnaby clinic recently, she had no idea she could look like everyone else.
“Now I am full of self confidence…I used to hide my eyes, and now I can look at you directly,” said Maria.
Ocularist Robert Drennan fit her with a prosthetic, and the change Sumaiya experienced is common at his practice.
“You are trying to replace something that is very dear to them. At the end, they look in the mirror and tears are running down their face,” he said.
Drennan is one of about 30 ocularists in the country, and one of only a handful in B.C. He works with his wife Marie Allen and their daughter, Heather.
“It’s very common in our industry,” says Allen.
She says most of the ocularists in the world pass the profession onto their children.
“There aren’t any schools for this kind of work, you have to intern under a certified practitioner.”
Oculary is an old profession, but new techniques have made the process customizable. It’s much simpler now to treat people with partially damaged eye sockets. Sumaiya is a perfect example. Her eye is still in the socket, now a thin shell can be matched exactly to her for a perfect fit.
According to Allen, most people like Sumaiya don’t even know they can benefit from the technology.
“That’s the best part of the job…seeing someone who has struggled with life for years get some sense of normality, it is so great,” she says.
Sumaiya says she can wear the prosthetic for hours and sometimes even forgets that she has it in.
She can’t get her vision back, but there is no replacement for the confidence that comes when the stares and awkward glances disappear.
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