09/02/2026
Science is so cool!
For more than 10 years, Gail Lane couldn't see a face, a flower or even the clothes she was wearing.
Then doctors used one of her own teeth to help her see again. 👁️
Gail lost her sight at 64 after a severe reaction to medication caused Stevens-Johnson syndrome, leaving both corneas badly scarred.
Traditional corneal transplants couldn't help her.
But her retina and optic nerve were still healthy, which made her eligible for one of medicine's most unusual procedures:
“tooth-in-eye” surgery.
In February 2025, surgeons at Mount Saint Joseph Hospital in Vancouver removed one of Gail's canine teeth.
They shaped part of the tooth and surrounding bone, drilled a tiny opening through it and fitted an artificial optical cylinder inside.
But they didn't put it into her eye immediately.
Instead, they buried it beneath the skin of her cheek for about three months so living tissue could grow around it. 🦷
In May, during a five-hour operation, the tooth-and-lens structure was removed from her cheek and implanted into her left eye. Gail became one of the first three Canadians ever to receive the procedure.
Her sight didn't return instantly.
At first, there was only more light.
Then large blurry shapes appeared.
Weeks later, Gail suddenly noticed something moving.
It was the wagging tail of Piper, her partner's guide dog.
Slowly, the rest of the dog came into view.
And then came the moment she had waited years for.
She began to see Phil, her partner, for the first time. ❤️
They had met while both were blind.
“It was emotional,” Gail recalled. “I was nervous. So was he.”
Soon she could see bright colors, flowers, cars and boats. With prescription glasses, doctors measured her vision at around 20/50.
A tooth that had once helped Gail eat had become the biological support for a tiny window allowing light back into her world.
After more than a decade without sight, which do you think would be the first thing you would want to see?
