SCHOOLCRAFT, Mich. – A contact lens from Sears may have saved the sight of a horse in Schoolcraft.

After Mary Lou Beyer’s veterinarian discovered a problem with her 6-week-old foal’s eyesight during a routine visit, Beyer said she contacted Dr. Matt Parker out of desperation.

The optometrist provided a contact lens for the young horse and later helped perform a procedure to save the filly’s eyesight.

Beyer’s veterinarian, Dr. Lynn Applegate, suggested getting a human contact lens to hold the retina together so it could heal. So Beyer contacted Sears Optical in the off chance the company would be able to help.

Beyer had previously visited Sears Optical, where Parker works, for her own eye care. Parker was able to provide information.

“I raced down to Sears, and he (Parker) gives me the contact and tells me how to put it in,” Beyer said.

But Parker said it was his own curiosity that prompted him to get further involved and take on the foal, named Mordecai’s Miracle Chance, as a patient at no charge to Beyer.

“Her vet mentioned that we could use a contact lens to get the same effect of a pressure bandage to keep the eyelid off the cornea so the retina could heal,” Parker said. “I was dubious that it would work, and I wanted to see it with my own eyes.”

On June 30, Parker made a house call to Beyer’s farm to examine the horse, nicknamed Myra, and put a new contact lens in her eye. Several days later, Parker, along with Applegate, performed surgery and put in another contact lens, which Parker removed on July 11. “She’s got vision. She’s incredible lucky,” Beyer said. “Nobody can believe that this man did this.”

Beyer said she does not know how the horse damaged her eye.

“I go out to feed the horses, and the baby, who wasn’t even 1 month old yet, had a terrible injury to her right eye,” said Beyer, who lives on a 5-acre farm. “The vet said the eye was actually melting away behind … where she had damaged the retina.”

Beyer said she knows that horses, by nature, are “very, very destructive” and that eye injuries are the No. 1 injury suffered by young horses because they’re so curious.

Parker said he has no plans to add animals to his clientele, but admits that caring for the horse was a nice change of pace.

As a special thank-you to Parker, Beyer said some of her horse friends are getting together to donate strands of horsetail and horsehair to Parker, an avid fly fisherman, so he can tie different-colored flies.

CM END PARIKH

(Jane C. Parikh is a reporter for the Kalamazoo (Mich.) Gazette. She can be contacted at jparikh(at)kalamazoogazette.com.)

2007-08-02-HORSE-CONTACT

AP-NY-08-02-07 1317EDT