Mike May had a successful corneal transplant and forty-two years later, his eye was healthy again. But his vision was still impaired.
In this week's radio story, we profile Mike May, who lives in Davis, California. Mike's the founder of a GPS-services company called Sendero Group and the author of a memoir, Crashing Through
Mike grew up in a rural part of New Mexico, on land that had once been owned by miners. When Mike was three years old, he opened up a jar containing an explosive chemical that the miners had left behind. The accident left him nearly blind.
Forty-two years later, doctors fixed one of his eyes (the other was too damaged) in a series of two procedures.
First they performed limbal stem cell transplant - an early, fairly-well established stem-cell procedure. Donor limbal cells, removed from a cadaver, were placed onto Mike's eye, where they repaired the scarred tissue. This made Mike a candidate for a successful corneal transplant. Forty-two years after his injury, Mike's eye was healthy again. But his vision was still impaired.
