Eye surgery a ‘2nd miracle’ for Hoover’s Cedric Oden

The first time Twyla Taylor saw her brother Cedric Oden, he was 17 months old and had a 10 percent chance of living.

“I remember coming home from work one day and I went into her bedroom and there was an infant with what seemed to me a gazillion tubes,” Taylor said.

Oden was failing to thrive and had “a lot of health conditions that were life threatening,” Taylor said. Her mother, Shelda Clarke Breedlove, was his private nurse trying to help the tiny infant survive. Eventually she made the choice to adopt him.

“She quit her job and brought him home because he needed around-the-clock care,” Taylor said.

“She said, ‘I had to try,’” Taylor added.

Oden beat the odds and survived, and their family considered it a miracle. When Oden, now 24, was diagnosed with a degenerative eye condition in late 2017, he beat the odds a second time.

Taylor and Oden are Ross Bridge residents since 2007. Oden graduated from Hoover High School in 2011 with the help of “very supportive teachers.” While Oden is nonverbal, he has reached a number of milestones that doctors couldn’t have predicted when he was an infant: he’s fully mobile, can eat by mouth rather than a tube and communicates through sign language and texting.

Oden enjoys texting and watching television, particularly basketball, as well as his job at United Cerebral Palsy shredding paper and working with some of the machines.

“He loves the job, loves the people,” Taylor said, to which Oden vigorously agreed.

In late 2017, Oden had a routine eye appointment and the doctor found that something wasn’t quite right. Oden had previously had some vision difficulty, and Taylor said the family had noticed one of his eyes would deviate on occasion. More studies revealed that Oden had keratoconus, a disease that causes the cornea to bulge outward, leading to vision problems as it worsens over time.

“The fact that at 24, a degenerative eye disease that would lead to blindness without any intervention, … that’s what was alarming to us,” Taylor said. She added that the fact the diagnosis was unrelated to Oden’s earlier health challenges made it all the more surprising.

“I think just initially we were in a state of panic,” Taylor said.

Taylor said they were referred through UAB’s Callahan Eye Hospital to ophthalmologist Dr. Jack Parker, who specializes in surgeries for rare conditions such as keratoconus.

Oden had two surgeries in December 2017 and February 2018, to add a layer of healthy cornea in the eye with more vision loss and “cross-link” his better eye. Cross-linking strengthens the cornea through a combination of the vitamin called riboflavin and UV light. 

“There are new structural bonds that are formed within the cornea,” Parker said of the cross-linking procedure, which he described as relatively new in the U.S. 

The layer of cornea added to one of Oden’s eyes also provides structural support, without the healing time and difficulties of a full corneal transplant, Parker said.

Taylor said their insurance wouldn’t cover the procedures, but Parker chose to do the surgery for free and contacted the International Retinal Research Foundation and the company Avedro to pay the costs of the materials and hospital bills. Parker said he wanted to do the work pro bono because Oden is an “extremely sweet guy,” as is the rest of his family.

“It really was an act of incredible generosity,” Parker said of the donations made on Oden’s behalf.

“They just went in and worked a miracle for our family,” Taylor said. “He really had some big support from other people that were interested in him doing well.”

It took only a couple weeks for Oden to recover from each of the surgeries. He has returned to his job, his hobbies and spending time with the adoptive mother who saved his life.

“The surgery does not reverse the condition, but it halts the progression of it,” Taylor said. “It may be 20 years, or it may be never, that he would need another procedure.”

As with his recovery as a baby, Taylor said their family considers the circumstances of Oden’s surgery and recovery to be divinely influenced.

“We feel that we have a second miracle with him,” Taylor said.