Just read this story and..

[DJ Smak]

it kind of made me feel sad inside, but a young man has endured much more than I..Sort of long but a good read

http://www.wavy.com/Global/story.asp?S=6603148&nav=23ii

Teen's death brings sight to Portsmouth man

June 2, 2007 07:59 PM

PORTSMOUTH, Va. (AP) -- As a teenager, Andre Jones often practiced for the moment when he would lose his sight. He'd awaken in the early morning hours and clench his eyes shut, beckoning the darkness to remain. The exercise eased his fears.

Yet preparing to see again after almost 10 years of near blindness terrified him. Jones had suffered from a corneal disorder since his teens.

As he sat in a Granby Street medical office last month, worries washed over him. What if the transplant on his left eye hadn't worked? What if his eye became infected? What if his body rejected the new tissue?

Dr. Vincent Verdi reassured his patient. The surgery had been successful. His left cornea was healing nicely. If everything progressed as expected, a transplant on Jones' right eye would be possible by summer's end, Verdi promised. Then, the test.

Jones stared forward as two fingers were held up about 15 inches from his face.

"How many do you see?" Dr. Verdi asked.

Jones beamed. "Two!"

He wanted to scream. His life had been altered in just over 24 hours. But guilt tempered his jubilation.

In Virginia Beach, two families were still reeling from the sudden loss of their teenage daughters. Alison Kunhardt, 17, was a junior at First Colonial High School. Tessa Tranchant, 16, was a freshman at Kellam High.

The close friends were killed the night of March 30. A drunken driver slammed into the back of their car as it sat at a stoplight on Virginia Beach Boulevard. Alfredo Ramos, an illegal immigrant, was charged with the crime, which attracted nationwide attention.

Jones had heard about the crash but learned more after his surgery. Recuperating at his Portsmouth home, he cried as he and his girlfriend, Chelsea Mills, read a newspaper article that gave details of the wreck. He'd suspected that his transplanted cornea had belonged to one of the teens. Within days, he knew Alison was the donor.

"It worked wonders for my faith," Jones said. "But at the same time, I kept asking, 'God, why would you allow this? I would have gone a little longer for those girls to live."

Jones, 28, doesn't know the exact time his world faded away or whether anyone was with him when it happened. He doesn't even think he immediately said anything to his family. At age 18, he'd already become fiercely independent.

He just recalls blurred images of lush green grass in the backyard of his grandmother's Deep Creek home in Chesapeake.

As a kid, Jones loved running barefoot across the lawn and playing tag and football underneath mammoth oak and pine trees.

He and his adopted mother, Andretta Jones, had moved in when he was 12. His sister, Alyssa, was born soon after.

To create a space of his own, Jones set up a makeshift studio in the barn behind the house where he could practice playing the drums and keyboard for hours.

An aspiring gospel singer and musician, Jones loved performing, especially at Norfolk's St. Andrews Temple Church of God, where his grandmother, Lauretta Jones, was a bishop and his mother a youth pastor.

Music soothed him, especially when his vision slowly worsened his senior year in high school.

While at Deep Creek High, he said nothing to his teachers or friends about his eyesight and shielded the problem from his family. They were struggling financially and were without insurance.

His mother's declining health also required more attention. Shed been diagnosed with HIV years earlier. Jones, who already was having trouble in school, dropped out to help care for her.

"I was scared of going blind, but I didn't want my mother to see me that way," he said. "I was fine as long as I had my strength."

Emotionally, Jones was hurting. He was on the verge of manhood but still developing socially. For a young man, blindness was embarrassing.

"It just does something to your self-esteem," he said. "You're always afraid that people are watching you."

He finally sought a diagnosis in the late 1990s. It was keratoconus, a progressive thinning and curvature of the cornea. The disease often affected teenagers and young adults.

Many patients did well with glasses or contact lenses, but Jones was told that he fell into the percentage that would eventually need corneal transplants.

The diagnosis frightened him. His family didn't have the thousands of dollars needed for the surgery, and Jones was determined not to look for handouts. So, he waited.

"With men, you also have to understand that if something is broken, you find a way to get it fixed on your own," he said. "With my sight, I just figured I'd find a way to deal with it."

He dove deeper into his music. He'd always played by ear, but his ability to pick out notes improved as his eyesight worsened. He could learn to play a song in less than 10 minutes.

Jones had been taught to rely on his faith, especially in troubling times.

Five years ago, after learning that a grant from a volunteer service group would pay for his transplant surgery, he sensed God's plan for him. Then, the grant fell through.

"I had been taught about this invisible God, this can-do-anything God, but after that, I almost questioned his existence," Jones said. "I was in so much turmoil."

His mother's death in 2002 was another setback. The day he buried her, he leaned in close and kissed her on the cheek. It was the only way he could see her to tell her goodbye.

People, objects, everything had dimmed into silhouettes. Jones did his best to play it off. If he walked into a room full of people, he'd ask a friend to give him a rundown of the guests.

More and more, he was fighting to maintain his independence. At Portsmouth's New Testament Church, Jones, the music director, struggled during services. He could barely see the organ without pressing his face to it. He considered quitting music altogether.

Mills, Jones' girlfriend, had always been impressed with his self-sufficiency. But enough was enough. Family members urged him to apply for Medicaid, and Mills encouraged him to have the corneal transplant.

The day he walked into Portsmouth's Social Services Department, Jones checked his pride at the door. A social worker who helped fill out the paperwork eased any last-minute fears he had about accepting assistance. Jones said she told him she suffered from the same corneal disorder.

"It had to have been God," he said.

Weeks after his surgery, Jones took pleasure in the little things, such as reading the back of a CD cover. He also felt as if he were meeting friends and loved ones for the first time. He'd relied so long on memories. Seeing himself again was equally surprising.

"From looking in the mirror, I can tell I had a large imagination," he said.

His sight was improving daily. As long as he took care of himself, his doctor predicted full recovery and, most likely, 20/20 vision.

Word spread quickly of his surgery, including to the Kunhardt family. Jones and David Kunhardt, Alison's father, agreed to meet and appeared together on a local TV station. Then "Good Morning America" called. The program is expected to show the interview early next month.

Alison Kunhardt had mentioned her desire to be an organ donor only a month before the crash, her father said. In meeting Jones, Kunhardt said he was comforted by Alison's donation.

"To see the joy in Andre's expression, it made me very happy that Alison made a difference," he said.

For Jones, the teen's gift has helped restore his confidence and love for music. He's even written a song, "Thank You, Alison," to express his gratitude.

In the first verse, Jones sings: "A senseless death claimed the lives of a mother's princess, a father's baby girl. Do we blame immigration, blame alcohol, or quietly mourn the jewels we lost?"

He hopes to record the song soon. He's also planning a benefit to raise awareness of organ donation and the dangers of drunken driving.

In regaining his sight, Jones has rediscovered an appreciation for his faith. At a recent church choir rehearsal, he confidently walked around embracing the singers after an emotional song of prayer.

God's blessings were at work, he said.

"For so long, I couldn't look forward to the future because I couldn't see the present," he said. "I now know I have a lot to look forward to."

(Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)

[Andrew MacLean]

DJ

Thank you for posting this story. It does us all good to remember that the operation we normally call a "graft" is actually a "transplant" that means that our joy is predicated on somebody else's sadness.

Andrew