Hope For Blind Chattanooga Toddler May Lie In China

18-month old Hilton Vogelmeier's mother Brittany Maney assures us that that her son is quite talkative, just not around strangers. It took a little coaxing, but we got him to say, "Hey".

"He's a daddy's boy...he loves the football, I guess it's the texture," says Maney.

Little Hilton can only feel the football...he can't see it.

"We had figured he had low muscle tone in his eyes, so we went to the pediatric opthamologist, and they had told us he had optic nerve hypoplasia," she says.

On outward appearances, it looks as if Hilton suffers from 'lazy eye'. The Optic Nerve Hypoplasia Maney is talking about is a condition where the optic nerve is underdeveloped.

In Hilton's case, it's left him essentially blind. And now, his parents are looking at surgery. "I feel like I'm obligated to at least try it because I'm his mom and I should try everything for him," Maney says.

The surgery she and her husband are considering takes them over 7,600 miles, from Chattanooga to Hangzhou, China, for a procedure using umbilical stem cells.

It's a procedure that costs 60-thousand dollars.

Maney says she herself is uncertain about the surgery, but she is optimistic. "We don't know if it'll work, but we know all 5 kids that went in and had his condition, along with thousands of others that went in for problems have all benefited," she says.

She says she's aware of the risks and the time for the trip, if she ultimately has to make it. "Three injections into the spinal cord, and two into the IV, and we have to stay in China for a month in the hospital," Maney says.

She says similar surgeries in the United States are only in study phases, and can't be legally performed.

Even if Hilton can't get the surgery, Maney says she'll be proud of her son, with or without sight. "We just say 'thank you god for our little boy, and let him learn braille, and he'll probably learn braille anyway, but just let him go to school just like all the other blind children have gone," she says

All she wants is for Hilton to lead a normal life.

We tried getting a hold of one of Hilton's doctors about the prospect of surgery, however he was busy with patients and was unavailable for comment.

You can, however, find out more information about the family's efforts, which include a fundraising drive for the surgery and trip.

Click on the "Hope for Hilton" link under the Links tab on the right side of this page.