Elderly Woman Suffering Double Vision Given Second Chance At Sight

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MIAMI (CBSMiami) – Imagine waking up one day and seeing double. Now, imagine not being able to find out why or if there's a cure.

Sylvia Gordon, 81, woke up one day and saw two of everything. She went to the doctor, but they gave her no answers.

"The neurologist said, 'Sylvia, you are a very healthy woman for your age – come back in six months.' And I just didn't want to take that as an answer to my lifestyle," said Gordon.

Before seeing double, Gordon was driving. She was involved in her church. She played bridge and spent time with the Red Hats Club. She also painted on china. Her artwork decorates her home in Homestead.

"I didn't want to give up reading. I like to read. My painting. I didn't want to give up my life that I had before. I felt like that that wasn't meant to be, that I was to vegetate," she said.

Gordon was married for 58 years to Earl Gordon. With her husband, they raised three kids, nine grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

Gordon said her husband kept fighting throughout his illness. In fact, it was his spirit for life that kept her digging for answers for five months after her vision went blurry.

"My husband had heart catheterization nine or 10 times. I thought if he can do it and lived all those years, I can do it," she said.

Two doctors, multiple MRI's and extensive blood works later, she was sent home again – with no hope.

"(I) felt like (the doctor was saying) this lady is 79, she doesn't have much longer to live. Come back and see me in six months, if you are alive. He didn't say that but that was the turning point for me," she said.

She kept pushing and got one more opinion and finally she was given a surprising diagnosis. She had an aneurysm on her eye muscle.

Dr. Eric Peterson, director of endovascular neuro surgery at Jackson Health System, said Gordon's aneurysm was the size of a nickel. It was located inside her skull, but outside her brain.  The aneurysm was pushing on nerves that come out of the brain and go into the eye, causing Gordon to see double.

What's scary is that she had no symptoms.

"Doctors kept asking me, 'Do you have any headaches?' No, I didn't have headaches. I didn't have symptoms that would have told me that it was an aneurysm," said Gordon.

If untreated, her condition would be permanent. But Dr. Peterson had a solution, a new procedure to relieve the pressure on the nerve.

Peterson got to the aneurysm on the eye muscle through an incision in the groin.

"There is a newer device out now that is a stent that allows the blood to be redirected away from the aneurysm. You don't have to put anything into the aneurysm. And over time, maybe over three or four months, the aneurysm slowly shrinks and regresses and goes away," said Peterson.

Just two months later, Gordon's life changed again. She was able to see normal.

She remembered the morning she woke up and discovered she had been cured.

"April 9th, on the Thursday after Easter, I woke up, I looked up on the wall and I only saw one TV. I turned the TV on and it was so bright. It was just like a miracle and I was seeing normal again," she said.

Peterson said, "She had a great outcome. I think for her, age is not important. For her case, there wasn't a consideration of how much longer she was going to have. Is she going to live another 20 years? Or 10 years? For her, she has this disability. Now I can fix this disability… give her back four beautiful years that she deserves."

Gordon has advice for anyone struggling with a health issue.

"If you feel in your heart that this isn't is the time for you to go, keep going there's somebody out there. I do believe in miracles. I feel this was a miracle," she said.