Laura Ponce is a 35 year-old nursery school teacher from Brazil with one hell of a story to tell.
Ever since she was 15, she’s noticed that her eyes don’t produce tears – instead they end up as solid white ‘chips’ she has to physically remove from beneath the eyelids herself. As you can imagine, the entire process is pretty painful for her.
“A clot starts to swell then I have to open my eye to take out the membrane. When it dries it hardens, it gets really hard, it hurts a lot.”
Each and every time she removes one, another has already begun forming in it’s place. It’s gotten so severe that she’s even had to take critical time off of work, just to remove anywhere around 30 of the hardened membranes daily.
Dr. Raul Goncalves may have – at long last – discovered the reason for Ponce’s condition. A respected ophthalmologist from the Hospital de Olhos de Bauru in Brazil; he believes that these little white membranes are caused by an excess of Keratin in her eyes!
“I have been an ophthalmologist for 25 years and I have never seen anything like it. For these plaques to form so fast there could only be one explanation, it must be chemical. Every time we blink you’re lubricating your eye, and tears are made of three layers – a water layer, a mucin layer and a fat layer. Each cell separately creates a product and when you blink you mix all this like a dough.”
In order to provide her with a sense of relief, Dr. Goncalves has prescribed her with silver nitrate eye drops. To learn more of Ponce’s extremely rare condition, it will be a feature of the up-and-coming ‘Body Bizarre’ this Thursday on TLC. Share this incredible story below!