BOSTON, Jun 14, 2009 (UPI via COMTEX) -- A Vermont woman maimed in an attack
with lye by her ex-husband says her vision recovered suddenly last month after
surgeries seemed to have failed.
Carmen Tarleton, 39, told The Boston Globe her sight returned when she yawned
May 7, more than a week after Dr. Samir Melki, an eye surgeon in Boston,
operated on her right eye. Soon after, she saw the face of one of her daughters
for the first time in more than two years.
Then came the hardest thing, looking in a mirror at what the attack had done to
her face and body.
"The first word that came to mind was 'disfigured,'" she said. "I know now that
my blindness was a blessing, because I am not sure I could have dealt with this
like I am now."
Tarleton, a nurse, met Herbert Rodgers, a medical supply salesman, when she
moved to California with her two daughters after a divorce. They married and
moved to Vermont, where she worked at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center.
After their divorce, Rodgers, who later said he had been hearing voices, came to
her house armed with a baseball bat and drain cleaner. He was sentenced to up to
70 years in prison after pleading guilty.
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Copyright 2009 by United Press International