"The Best They Could"

In Rochester, Minn, last week, the unhappy parents of four-year-old Carolyn Joan Purcell found the "miracle" they were looking for. The little Georgia girl, threatened a fortnight ago (TIME, Jan. 15) with the terrible alternatives of certain death or blindness by surgery, had been rushed to the famed Mayo Clinic by Atlanta Shriners. The Mayo doctors had pushed waiting patients aside to consider Carolyn Joan's case, and, after a painstaking ten-hour examination, had pronounced their verdict: Carolyn Joan was free of cancer, needed no operation.

"It was the hand of God moving to stay the hand of the surgeon," said Carolyn Joan's mother.

Back home, some of Mrs. Purcell's joy gave way to bitterness: "Why did the doctors let me believe they had to take my child's eyes out?" The answer: the doctors themselves believed it. It is often impossible to tell the difference between certain inflammatory conditions and cancer of the eyes without removing the eye for microscopic examination. If there is any possibility of cancer, most doctors would rather sacrifice one eye than risk the patient's life by waiting.

The Georgia specialist who was first called in by Carolyn Joan's family doctor was convinced that cancer was present. When the Purcells refused to let him remove one of her eyes, he took her case to the staff specialists at Atlanta's Grady Memorial Hospital. Their conclusion was that immediate operation was vital.

Hearing of Carolyn Joan's planned trip to Rochester, Grady's chief eye surgeon wrote Mayo: "Some of us feel that the right eye should be sacrificed to make a proper diagnosis." Mayo apparently felt that the sacrifice was unnecessary. "Carolyn Joan has an inflammatory condition within each eyeball," they announced after studying her case. "It is not necessary to remove either eye for this disease."

"I guess," said father Frank Purcell after his first good night's sleep in three weeks, "those Grady doctors did the best they could."

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