Middletown Woman Gets Cornea Transplant from Organ Donor

Middletown, NJ - For as long as she can remember, Christine Scarano struggled to see.

When she was in third-grade, teachers thought she was cheating because she kept asking other students what it said on the chalkboard. At her first eye exam, she remembers she couldn't even make out the big "E" — it was just blurry lines.

She wore thick glasses all her life and, at 24, was diagnosed with keratoconus.

It's a degenerative, progressive eye disease in which the cornea is irregularly shaped, changing the way light is seen. There is no cure, and it gets worse over time, meaning Christine's vision would steadily deteriorate as the years passed, eventually leading to near blindness.

For this North Middletown resident, 43, there was only one treatment: A cornea transplant. But who would give up their corneas? Christine's new eyes had to come from someone young, someone healthy — and someone who had recently died.

The gift of sight

In her early 30s, she was put on a list for organ recipients. One Friday morning, she got a phone call. A tissue match had come through. She needed to get to the hospital right away for blood work and preparation, and the transplant was done Monday.

The corneas had come from a young man in Pennsylvania. He had been walking across the road from his house to get the mail when he was hit by a truck. At the age of 26, he died.

But, he was an organ donor. Christine had to be awake throughout the entire surgery, moving her eyes to the left and to the right so doctors could make sure they were implanted correctly.

After she had recovered, she wanted to write the young man's family a letter.

"It was the hardest thing I've ever had to write. But my vision had really improved. I wanted to tell them what a gift this was," she said.

She never expected a reply. A few weeks later, the man's mother wrote back to her.

"She told me all about her son. She said he had been born with congenital heart issues, and he had been in physical therapy for many years," she said. "They liked the fact that I'm a physical therapist. They were devastated when he died, obviously. But she told me she had some peace in knowing that she was more connected to my life. She said she was happy to know that he would live on in me."

Today, years later, Christine still thinks about that young man every single day.

"It's funny how often I think of him. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't think of the sacrifice his family made for me," she said. "I can see better because of them. It's very, very humbling."

He shared his eyes; she shares his story

Christine now works with Eversight New Jersey, a non-profit that promotes eye transplants and research. On June 5, she will run a 5K for the Sharing Network, an organ donor network in New Jersey. Later in June, she will compete in Cleveland in the Transplant Games of America. Christine is on a team made up of New Jersey, New York and Connecticut residents who are alive today because of organ donations.

"Some of them got new lungs. Some of them got new hearts. I just got new corneas," she said. "I want to share my story often so that donor families know the choice they made is huge."

She surfs. She snowboards. Once her vision improved, she went back to an old hobby: Photography. Her work has been displayed at Jamian's Food and Drink in Red Bank and Carton Brewing Company, a craft brewery in Atlantic Highlands.

"They didn't have a choice to lose their son, but they did have a choice to share him with other people," Christine said. "Every day, I think of all the things I get to see because of him."

Photos: Christine and her fiance, John Ward, moments after he proposed in Kyoto, Japan; Christine doing a Tough Mudder in 2012; volunteering at "Life Rolls On," which takes people with spinal cord injuries surfing.