Source: Elpasotimes

EL PASO -- It was nothing short of amazing.

The thrill of shooting a basketball through the hoop at a West Side park was something Lawrence E. Brown III would not have dared to even dream of only a year ago.

Lawrence, 17, was born blind.

The El Paso High School senior has a condition called optic nerve hypoplasia -- an underdevelopment of the nerves in his eyes. In July, he and his family placed their faith in a controversial stem-cell treatment.

The procedure is not available in this country and is met with skepticism by many U.S. doctors. No treatment exists for his condition, said Dr. Michael Repka, pediatric ophthalmologist at Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore.

So Lawrence and his mother and sister spent six weeks in Qingdao, China, so he could undergo nine stem-cell transfusions intended to stimulate the growth of his optic nerves.

The umbilical stem cells were delivered intravenously through his arm or injected directly into his spine. He received acupuncture and electric wave therapy to help stimulate the cells' work.

Since then, the improvements in his sight have been dramatic.

Before the treatment, his vision was little more than limited perception of light, color and shadowy masses.

Today, though his vision is still severely impaired, he can make out figures in the hall at school.

He can discern the general shapes of people in photographs held up near his eyes. He can make out the round shape of a basketball hoop at his neighborhood
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park.

It was about three weeks ago that his friend, a basketball player, picked up Lawrence at home and announced he would be sinking a basket that day.

"I was like, 'You're crazy, dude,' but I had no choice but to go, so I went and I made it on the second shot," Lawrence said, grinning at the memory. "It was cool. It was amazing. That was one of the coolest feelings I've ever had in my life."

It was the only shot he made that day, but it astonished him that he was able to hit the backboard time and again.

"I could see where the hoop was. I could see that the hoop was round, that it wasn't a square. I knew what it felt like, but the biggest thing I've learned is knowing what something looks like and what it feels like are two completely different things," Lawrence said.

His progress has been gradual.

His first improvements began while he was still in China. He began seeing changes in his perception of color and he started detecting movement. Since then, he's progressed to discerning large shapes.

"I can see this couch is a rectangle," he said during an interview at home last week.

He stopped using his cane to navigate around school about two weeks ago after it broke.

"I took it as a sign that maybe I don't really need the cane. I've bumped into as many people without it as with it," Lawrence said.

But with his extreme sight limitations, he plans to continue using a cane when visiting unfamiliar places.

Depth perception is something else Lawrence never dealt with before, and its development has forced a big adjustment.

"It still happens on and off -- I'll reach for something and I'll reach too far and knock it over or I won't reach far enough. It's weird," he said.

His mom, Georgina A. Brown, said he has trouble gauging distance when approaching her and sometimes moves in extremely close.

"I'll come too close because I'm barely getting this depth and volume and angles and all of that, and shapes are becoming bigger shapes and more solid shapes," Lawrence said. "It's learning to see the character of things, that they have actual being."

As he's begun to get a sense of the world around him, the clay sculptures he's made for years have started to change, his mother said.

"The way he's putting the coloring together is much better. Before, he used to ask what looks good with what," Georgina Brown said.

"He tells us what he wants. He's sure of what he wants," Lawrence' 10-year-old sister, Emani Brown, said.

Lawrence hasn't been back to see his optometrist since he returned from China, but is planning to go sometime in early 2010.

His mom said she wants at least six months to have passed from his last stem-cell treatment before visiting the doctor.

"We don't want to give them any reason to think that I got worse because of China," Lawrence said.

The stem-cell procedure is not approved for use in this country, and U.S specialists are reluctant to say whether it might eventually become a treatment for optic nerve hypoplasia.

"I think we know an insufficient amount about the treatment, either why it should work or why it should not work," Repka said in an interview earlier this year.

The Brown family hopes to return to China in about a year for another round of stem-cell treatments. Doctors there told them it's best to wait until Lawrence's sight improvements stop before starting a new round of transfusions.

Sometimes, Lawrence becomes aggravated when what he wants to see is just beyond his sight.

"It's kind of frustrating looking at these (photos) because I can see there's people and there's things but I can't see the definition in it," he said. "It's just barely out of my reach to tell what it is."

Lawrence recently completed an application to attend college next year at California State University, Northridge, where he hopes to study jazz performance. He will audition at the school Jan. 30.

"People ask me what I'm going to do when he goes away. They ask if I'll follow him," Georgina Brown said. "No. This is what I did all those years. I gave him independence and now he has his wings and he has to fly."

She said as the holidays approached, she thought back to the first Christmas when the family knew Lawrence was blind and had no hope of any treatment.

"I went to the mall and I was crying because he couldn't see the lights. I was explaining everything to him," she said.

Today, Lawrence has something doctors told them would be impossible: Progress. Limited sight.

He knows he will probably always be visually impaired, but he is grateful for the improvements he has made.

"My mom has taught me about maximizing anything you do to the fullest. Whether it be in your job or your schoolwork, it should be all the way," Lawrence said. "I appreciate her for instilling that in me and for pumping it into me day and night."

He said he is reminded daily about how much he has to be thankful for and is grateful to El Pasoans for donating much of the money that allowed him make his $60,000 trip to China.

"There's not a day that goes by that I don't think about the changes, that I don't think about China," Lawrence said. "There's not a day that goes by that I'm not looking for something new. Every day holds new opportunities for me to see something new."

Erica Molina Johnson may be reached at Această adresă de e-mail este protejată de spamboţi; aveţi nevoie de activarea JavaScript-ului pentru a o vizualiza ; 546-6132.