Baby Boy’s Vision Saved Thanks To TikTok

by Kevin Burton

    Sometimes we get tired of being beat up by the news and decide to go up-beat.

   Today we present a second straight day of positive news from the Good News Network. In our first story, a young boy will be blessed to grow up with normal vision thanks to a stranger’s expert observations on a video.

   “New mother Lily Fleet posted a cleverly-edited video dressing her son Ari that happened to be spotted by optometrist Laura Brown. Noticing Ari’s left eye had a cloudy appearance and an outward squint during a short few seconds of the video, she messaged Fleet suggesting she get the eight-week-old checked out.”

   “The tests revealed he had congenital glaucoma, which required an urgent operation to open a tube in his eye so fluid could drain out.”

   “Lily had been to the doctors already, but had been turned away, until she went armed with Brown’s advice.”

   “‘When we saw the specialists they said this isn’t often picked up before seven months so we’re very lucky,’” Fleet said from East London. ‘I wasn’t surprised because I had noticed his eye and been to the doctor but Laura encouraged me to make sure I saw a specialist which made all the difference.’”

   “I’m so grateful to her for reaching out. It’s something I’ll never forget,” she added.

   “Untreated, glaucoma can eventually lead to blindness. Fleet said she had noticed Ari’s eye wasn’t focusing properly and had been reassured it was fine by her doctor at his six-week checkup.

   “She was told to come back if the squint hadn’t self-corrected by three months. The cloudiness, which is caused by the undrained fluid, appeared a week later.

   “He would 100 percent have lost all or most of the vision in that eye in a couple of months, if it had been left untreated,” Brown said, adding that parents shouldn’t ignore their instincts about their child’s health.

   Our next story stays with the medical theme. A woman’s unique ability has helped researchers zero in on a test for Parkinson’s. Disease.

   “In Scotland there’s a woman who can smell changes in body odor corresponding to the presence or onset of Parkinson’s disease.”

   “Keeping with Scotland’s decorated history of medical discoveries, this ‘curse and a benefit’ is now being used to develop a fast test for Parkinson’s that involves simply scraping a cotton ball over the back of the neck for examination.”

   “More than 40 years ago, Joy Milne noticed an abrupt change in the natural odor of her husband, Les, when he was 33-years-old. She knew herself to have a supersensitive nose being someone who couldn’t go into the cleaning section of a supermarket. But 12 years later, Les was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in an already progressive state, and it got her thinking it was the cause.”

   “In 2012 Les, a former-doctor, went to find someone who could investigate further the connection between scent and Parkinson’s alongside Joy.”

   “That initial inquiry led them to a professor at the University of Edinburgh who formed a team to put Joy’s sense of smell to the test. Believing that Parkinson’s caused damage to a kind of skin oil known as sebum, they let Joy smell the t-shirts of those who had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s and those who hadn’t. While she correctly identified which shirts belonged to the Parkinson’s patients, she was thought to have guessed incorrectly one time—until 8 months later when the patient whose shirt it belonged to received a diagnoses of Parkinson’s.

   In our final story, a woman with a big heart and a drone at her disposal has become a dog lover’s best friend.

   “A dog lover has been hailed a ‘real-life superhero’ for using her drone to reunite families with their lost pups—most recently, just in time before a ‘deadly’ storm hit.

   “Sept. 9th was a normal Friday for Erica Hart, as she abandoned her shopping trip to rush home and launch a drone search for a schnauzer before a rumbling thunderstorm made things worse.”

   “Jamie Hollinshead phoned her from Clayton, Yorkshire, to say his rescue dog Hilda had bolted from their garden and they’d already searched for two hours.”

   “The 33-year-old rushed to the last-known location and within 20 minutes spied the escaped pooch running down a residential road. When the two-year-old dog darted into a nearby field and kept moving, Erica was able to direct Jamie and his wife to the best spot for intercepting her.”

   “The couple from Clayton, who adopted the rescue dog this past April, believes Hilda could have been killed had she not been found before the thunderstorm hit minutes later.”

   “What she did is brilliant. She’s a hero, a real superhero. Erica was in constant communication with us. She knew what she was doing and where to look,” Leah Hollinshead said.

   “The humble drone operator believes she’s rescued more than 200 dogs in seven years and has started a Facebook group where users share lost dog posts and Hart shares the happy endings.