‘Miraculous’ Cure Restores Girl’s Sight

Six weeks ago, Veronica Rocha could not even see the peach bows adorning her white party dress.

But on Saturday, the 14-year-old will don the gown and dance at her quinceanera , after a stunning recovery from a rare viral infection that left her temporarily blind.

The Baldwin Park teen-ager lost her sight after an emergency operation June 11 to remove her appendix. Within days of the surgery, her vision became blurred and doubled, and soon she could see nothing.

“When I got back home I started seeing double,” Veronica said. “Then I couldn’t see anymore. It was pretty scary.”

After a battery of tests, doctors determined that the virus that had triggered her appendicitis also made her brain swell. The swollen brain pushed on her optic nerves and caused the blindness, pediatric neurologist Dr. William Goldie said.

“If that goes on too long, (the nerves) can die,” said Goldie, who treated Veronica at Queen of the Valley Hospital in West Covina and plans to submit a report on her case to pediatric neurology journals.

“If it goes on too long, you reach that point at which it is no longer reversible.”

Goldie said medication to stop the swelling didn’t work, so four weeks after the blindness began, Veronica was admitted to the hospital, where a shunt was put in her spine to drain excess fluid from around the brain.

The shunt--a drain tube--relieved the pressure, Goldie said.

But because the optic nerves had been traumatized, it seemed unlikely that Veronica would completely regain her eyesight.

Four weeks without sight “would suggest that she was to be forever blind,” Goldie said.

Instead, she has regained almost perfect vision in her right eye and improving vision in her left.

“Before, I could just see a shadow,” Veronica said. Now she said she can see well enough to attend her quinceanera --the traditional Latina coming-out party held on a girl’s 15th birthday.

Veronica, who will share her party with her twin sister, said Saturday’s festivities have been planned for more than a year. The prospect of the bash, to be attended by 300 people, motivated her to recover, she said.

“She wanted to have her party,” agreed Veronica’s twin sister, Stephanie. “She kept saying she was going to get better, and she did.”

Goldie said Veronica’s recovery defies odds.

Dr. Brett Foxman, an instructor of ophthalmology at the UCLA Medical School, said such cases are rare but not unheard of.

When eyesight is totally lost, often little can be done to treat the patient, Foxman said. “When they get to the point of losing all their vision, we count them out. We frequently will not do any more because (the eye) is dead.”

For Veronica’s vision to return, he said, the optic nerves could not have been severely damaged despite her extended blindness.

Goldie credited the shunt and Veronica’s “undying faith that everything was going to be all right” for her recuperation.

“It’s miraculous,” he said.

Happy to be home, Veronica said Tuesday that she is enjoying her regained eyesight. “In the hospital you’re just looking at one room,” she said. “There’s a lot more to look at around here.”