Wallaroo Gets Eye-Opening Treatment

For Dr. Raymond Weinstein, a family practitioner, the delicate eye surgery he helped perform Saturday on a blind wallaroo was the first time he ever had to worry about “moving a patient’s tail out of the way.”

To Dr. Gene Zdenek, a Reseda ophthalmologist who led the three-hour operation, the Spartan animal hospital in which he performed the task was hardly high-tech, “but a lot better than some places I’ve done surgery in China.”

The two medical doctors on Saturday entered the unfamiliar world of animal surgery to restore sight to a cataract-blinded wallaroo taken from its owners by state authorities and handed over to the Wildlife Way Station in the Angeles National Forest, a nonprofit group that cares for exotic and wild animals that are sick or abandoned.

Amid the screeching of squirrel monkeys scampering in their cages and the howling of wolves penned nearby, the two physicians and the Way Station’s resident veterinarian, Dr. Silvio Santinelli, painstakingly removed a cataract the size of a small marble that had blinded the wallaroo for many years.

The complicated effort to save the sight of the doe-eyed wallaroo known as Menehuni appeared to be a complete success, with vision to one eye believed to be entirely restored. The doctors won’t know for sure until Menehuni awakens today in his darkened cage and begins to react to shapes and light.

But the operation, performed free of charge after Weinstein learned in a newspaper report that the Way Station was caring for animals blinded by cataracts, was not without its obstacles.

First, a handful of veterinarians who felt that the doctors should stay out of the veterinary field telephoned them to complain. One veterinarian offered to do the surgery free herself, but too many preparations had already been made and the doctors decided to proceed as planned.

Then, the doctors had to grapple with a risky decision to dismantle a $75,000 microscope used in human cataract surgery and move it from Reseda to the Way Station’s operating room more than 15 miles away.

Finally, the two doctors found Saturday that the cataract was tougher to remove than a human cataract, and, unable to keep the wallaroo under anesthesia for more than a couple of hours without endangering it, chose to restore sight to only one of Menehuni’s eyes.

Despite such problems, Zdenek said, “We were just terribly excited to be of help. We should call the little guy ‘Lucky’ after this, assuming all goes well.”

Menehuni, like many of the exotic and wild animals that wind up in the care of the Way Station, probably became handicapped because of improper care by its owners.

Weinstein said it is likely that his owners fed it animal chow containing milk sugars, which cannot be broken down by a wallaroo’s enzymes. The milk sugars lodge in the lens of an animal’s eyes, causing thick cataracts.

“This poor guy’s condition illustrates the reason why most people shouldn’t have exotic animals,” Zdenek said. “The people probably had no idea they were blinding their pet.”

During the surgery, Zdenek, assisted by the high-powered microscope, cut away tiny particles of the milky white, gelatinous cataract that glowed in the center of the wallaroo’s eye, completely obscuring its pupil and retina.

Later, he made an incision in the eye tissue to remove the hardened center of the cataract.

Zdenek said the cataract’s core was “almost like a bone,” indicating that it had probably been there for several years, blinding the animal for most of its 7 to 11 years of life.

As the two doctors worked over Menehuni, Santinelli, who handled the delicate task of anesthetizing the furry creature, held his hand on the wallaroo’s gently heaving chest to monitor its breathing.

Menehuni, draped in sterile blue hospital sheets by two nurses, soon began peacefully snoring, occasionally wiggling its huge--and powerful--back feet.

“The only real problem we’ve had is getting him to sign an insurance form,” Weinstein quipped.

An hour and a half after the surgery began, Zdenek and Weinstein finally removed the solid center of the cataract, revealing for the first time the wallaroo’s dark retina.

“With humans, the surgery is done while they are awake, and when we take out a cataract during surgery like that, they cry out, ‘I can see now!’ ” Zdenek said.

“We won’t know if the wallaroo feels that way, but I bet he’ll be surprised when he wakes up.”

Weinstein and Zdenek said they were “relieved” to discover that the wallaroo did not have a more complicated cataract involving tissues that attach to the retina.

“Many veterinarians shy away from cataract surgery because you have a good chance of running into cataracts in these (deeper tissues), and it’s hard to separate them without some pretty expensive equipment,” Weinstein said.

Weinstein said he and Zdenek volunteered to help because “somebody’s got to be an advocate for these animals. When other doctors heard what we were planning to do, they stepped forward and said, ‘If you need anything in my specialty, please call.’ ”

In fact, he said, among more than half a dozen “human doctors” who contacted him were two orthopedic surgeons who may examine and treat several crippled wild cats whose owners de-clawed them.

De-clawing larger cats such as mountain lions or leopards often causes a painful foot ailment caused by cutting into a leg tendon, Weinstein said.

When they work on handicapped animals in the future, Weinstein said, he hopes that the initial angry reactions from veterinarians will die down, and that more veterinarians will volunteer.

“We couldn’t have done this without assistance from veterinarians like Dr. Santinelli, and Dr. Ben Gonzales at the Los Angeles Zoo, who gave us a lot of important reading materials and helped us study up for this procedure,” Weinstein said.

Martine Colette, founder and director of the Wildlife Way Station who watched the operation, said she “is thrilled “ to have medical doctors with highly sophisticated equipment helping out, and she welcomes more medical experts, whether doctors or veterinarians.