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Dwayne and Ashleigh Collins with their daughter Liberty, 3, and son Caius, 18 months.
WHEN Liberty Collins was lying on the change table as a newborn, her father looked into her eyes and noticed they were wide open, even as the sun shone directly into them.
“That’s when I knew something was wrong,” he told news.com.au.
Dwayne and wife Ashleigh took their little girl to a Brisbane doctor and were referred to a specialist, who told them she had a rare condition called micropthalmia, meaning one of her eyes is abnormally small.
She would need a prosthetic “conformer” fitted over it every three to six months, to help her face grow evenly, the ocularist said.
The family were moving back to their home country of New Zealand, and that’s where their troubles really started. The first specialist they saw wouldn’t listen when the family tried to explain Libby’s unique combination of health issues, and the second put too much product in her eye to make the mould, leaving her writhing in agony.
Dwayne, 34, couldn’t bear seeing his daughter in agony when doctors botched the mould for her prosthetic eye.Source:Supplied
Libby was born with an abnormally small eye, and needs a ‘conformer’ fitted into the socket every three to six months to help her face grow evenly.Source:Supplied
“It sucked on to her eyeball, he panicked and tried to pull it out,” Dwayne, 34, told news.com.au. “I told him not to.
“We had to go to hospital. She pushed me and two nurses off her. My wife could hear screaming.”
Her parents walked out in tears. That’s when Dwayne, who works in maintenance and design, decided he would learn to make Libby’s eyes himself.
“I don’t think any parent wants to see their child in pain,” he said. “You do what you do for the kids. I made a decision she wasn’t going through that.”
Libby’s parents walked out of the hospital crying after her botched procedure.Source:Supplied
He and Ashleigh, a 32-year-old beauty therapist, have since had son Caius, 18 months, and have lived on the Gold Coast since April 2016. Dwayne has found a passion for making Libby’s eyes, and is crowd-funding his trip to the UK to train with an acrylic eye pioneer and become a professional.
There is a shortage of experts in the specialised field in Australia and New Zealand. Only 3000 people in New Zealand wear a prosthetic eye, which is why the Collins family had so much trouble finding someone who could help Libby.
The three-year-old still finds the procedure extremely distressing, but at least her dad knows he is hurting her as little as possible.
“I’ve had a lot of things go wrong,” Dwayne said. “I’m getting better and better.
Dwayne, a maintenance and design expert, taught himself to make Libby’s eyes after realising thereSource:Supplied
He’s got better and better at the task of building prosthetic eyes, and now plans to become a professional to fill a shortage of specialists in Australia and New Zealand.Source:Supplied
“She’s really bad still when I put her eye in or take it out to clean. I walk off and have a cry sometimes.
“The secret to it is layers. You can end up with 50 layers of paint — two base colours, a clear coat, you mix up another layer, building depth of the eye. It’s just a very small amount of blue, mostly white and black. I can paint it now in less than an hour.”
Dwayne hopes to set up his own clinic on the Gold Coast when he returns and fulfil his dream of helping his daughter and others who suffer from her traumatising condition.
You can contribute to the Collins family’s GoFundMe page to raise money for Dwayne’s training here.