Page 20 - Optic Nerve News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

A carrot different ways where surgery is the predominant choice your specialization is the retina and retinal diseases and if you want to examine the retina or to treat it can you do this through an artificial and says well for me that doesn't really matter whether i look at that is we look at the optic disc for example that is the where the optic nerve starts that connects basically the eye and the brain in this area we can also observe all of the retina investigator and we can look whether the retinas a teched or not the best culture would be for example affected in diabetes and then we also...

>> reporter: those were only the shots to his head. the tip of his ring finger was blown off. other shots hit his thumb and shoulder. >> there were six pretty good sized bullet holes. >> reporter: when he was well enough to talk to detectives, sutton told them what he could. the story of a man who barely witnessed the attack that killed his wife and almost killed him. he was a former college swimmer, so he was watching an olympic diving event in the master bedroom, he said. >> next thing i know, somebody was standing there in a black hat or visor, black shirt, black pants. face shaded by the v...

Couldn't even imagine. i don't even, i can't even try to think what that would be like. >> reporter: memorizing things and going into court, what is that -- a pretty determined guy. >> yeah, i agree. >> reporter: but adapting, even successful adapting using a talking typewriter for example. wasn't enough for john sutton. as he waited for his son's long delayed trial he pursued with something like an obsession, a quest to regain his eyesight. and most people might have given up by then. can't do anything. live with it. >> not even close. i won't take no for an answer. >> reporter: some of the b...

And a little germ of hope lodged itself in his stubborn mind. >> reporter: you were thinking, maybe they can do it for you. >> i said i am in the right spot. >> reporter: he talked to the leading researcher working on optic nerve repair. >> have you done any studies with severed optic nerves. >> reporter: he peppered them with questions like he was cross-examining witnesses. mike gilmore, president of the research clinic offered sutton a glimmer of hope. >> we will be able to regenerate an optic nerve not so much a question of can we, when can we? >> reporter: and it was a good news/bad news s...

Optic nerve in mice using stem cell therapy and drugs, human trials would be next. so in march 2008, almost three years to the day after his son was arrested, sutton and his girlfriend kathy were on the cold, rain swept streets of boston on the way to an appointment at the clinic. >> okay. there is a chin rest in front of you. a doctor evaluated, sutton's one intact eye and discovered though the nerve was destroyed, the rest of the eye, theoretically at least could work. >> my son is in jail, charged with first degree murder. >> reporter: they listened to the awful story of the way john lost h...