I left my apartment early in the morning and drove south along A1A in Miami Beach, with the sapphire and emerald waves of the Atlantic Ocean on my left, and bright, colorful Art Deco buildings on my right. The road was lined with palm trees whose leaves were still in the quiet of the dawn. The colors of the sunrise were spilling over the horizon and across the water. Miami Beach was breathtaking, and the area was alive with an abundance of fun things to do. Unfortunately, I had very little time to enjoy it because after I finished seeing patients all day, much of my evening was taken up with a certain company of rabbits.
While I was more than willing to travel the more than 1,200-mile trip to visit Gwen, who was busy building an ophthalmology practice near Cleveland, Ohio, she preferred to escape the cold and come my way so she could enjoy sunny Florida. Every time she arrived in Miami, we would hit the beach, soaking up the warmth from the rays above and the sand beneath. Despite her mother’s continued resistance, Gwen seemed to become even more committed to our relationship, so I felt confident that it was just a matter of time until we would win over her parents so we could finally be together.
In between Gwen’s visits, I was immersed in research to find a way to prevent scarring and the resulting blindness after corneal injuries. Seven years after my encounter with the patient at Massachusetts General Hospital who had been blinded by scarring after a corneal trauma, I could finally delve into the question that had plagued me ever since, as I was now doing a corneal fellowship and had more time to devote to the study of corneal trauma and injuries. I still hoped to figure out how stem cells and fetal tissue could be tapped to improve the healing process in a human cornea after injury, but without harming the fetus. For years, a solution evaded me and I had nearly given up trying to reconcile this conflict between stem cell and fetal tissue research and the sacredness of life. But I felt empowered and transformed by my newfound Christian faith, and supported and encouraged by Gwen. I also kept in mind what Gwen’s dad had told me early on at a dinner—if we are patient, God will grant us wisdom in time.
After that conversation, I kept a piece of paper in my pocket on which I had written out the Bible verse, James 1:4, which says: “Let perseverance finish its work so that we may be mature and complete, lacking nothing.” My life’s journey had taught me over and over again that nothing worthwhile came quickly or easily. Just because the solution to the conflict between scientific research and Christian faith was elusive, that didn’t mean the solution didn’t exist. I needed to persevere and trust that God would show the way in His perfect time.
At Bascom Palmer, I had chosen Professor Scheffer Tseng—a world-renowned specialist in ocular surface disease and reconstruction—as my research advisor. I shared my qualms, conflicts, and confusion with Professor Tseng, as I had done with Gwen’s father.
“I don’t see how we can avoid this research, since fetal tissue has magical scarless healing properties,” I said. “But I don’t want to hurt the fetus. I’ve been wrestling with this question for years. How can we benefit our adult patients without harming unborn children?”
He shared with me that his lab had actually reintroduced the use of the amniotic membrane very recently.
“The amniotic sac has the same biochemical properties as fetal tissue, so we’re exploring whether the membrane that lines the sac holds the same healing power outside the womb.”
Professor Tseng’s words truly excited me. I began to read about the amniotic membrane’s use in medical treatments. The amniotic membrane is part of the tough, transparent amniotic sac where a baby grows in the womb. At the turn of the twentieth century, doctors had started using the amniotic membranes from placentae to reduce scarring in procedures like stomach surgery. In the 1950s, doctors again experimented with the membrane to reduce fibrosis in general surgery. The application hadn’t come into widespread use because of inherent limitations in the bioengineering of amnion tissue during those years.
Nearly a century after the first experiments with amniotic membranes, Professor Tseng was applying the idea to ophthalmology. I felt an immense swell of excitement at the possibility that perhaps the time had finally come for a solution to the problem that had puzzled me for so many years. I was grateful to God that my life’s path had led me to Dr. Tseng’s lab in South Florida, so many years and hundreds of miles away from my earliest questions at Harvard Medical-school.
Dr. Tseng and I collected amniotic sacs donated by mothers who had delivered their babies via Cesarean section, which was the only way to keep the amniotic sac intact and usable after birth. We began testing the amniotic membrane on lab rabbits to see if we could recreate the fetal environment, the membrane’s rapid regeneration and scarless healing properties. Following laser treatments on each of a rabbit’s eyes, I covered one eye with the amniotic membrane for a week and left the other uncovered, in order for the experiment to be controlled and the results compared.
After several weeks of observing the rabbit’s corneas, I then invited Professor Tseng and Bascom Palmer’s cornea specialists—including Professors Richard Foster, William Culberson, Andrew Huang, Carol Karp, Eduado Alfonso, Khalil Hanna, and Stephen Pflugfelter—to inspect the corneal scarring and note their impressions of the results.
“No one knows which eye was treated with the amniotic membrane,” I told them. “Just take a close look and grade the amount of corneal scarring in each eye.”
This double-blind study confirmed what I had witnessed myself, that is, that the eye that was covered by the amniotic membrane had 75 percent less amount of scarring than the eye that was left uncovered. I was elated that the healing power of the womb was, in fact, still present in the amniotic sac tissue, and since the placenta was simply discarded after birth, the use of this tissue presented absolutely no harm to the baby.
I was very curious about the molecular mechanism by which the amniotic membrane reduced scarring. When I took a closer look, I discovered that the eye treated with the membrane had less inflammation. By covering the cornea within twenty-four hours of the laser treatment, the membrane inhibited the natural, exaggerated wound healing response. Less inflammation meant less cell death, which ultimately resulted in less scarring. We published the first paper in scientific literature that demonstrated laboratory success in reducing corneal scarring and cell death with amniotic membrane transplantation, and we explained how the treatment helped restore sight.
Our work had been a dramatic leap forward in the quest to capture the healing power of the womb, but when we explored how to apply our findings to the clinical setting for patients, we hit a significant roadblock. We had been working with sedated rabbits in a highly controlled laboratory setting, but in a real life trauma situation, it would be very difficult to suture a membrane onto a patient’s painfully damaged cornea. Additionally, injured eye tissue would be vulnerable to perforation from suturing, which could expose the eye to dangerous infection and blindness. Furthermore, the technique to perform the minuscule sutures necessary to attach the amniotic membrane also required highly specialized surgeons who might not be on hand when needed. The amniotic membranes also had to be available at all times so patients could be treated within twenty-four hours of their injuries.
We needed to come up with a much better way to apply the amniotic membrane to a freshly injured eye in a safer, more effective and more timely manner.
We were so close to the long-awaited ethical solution to using fetal tissue to treat corneal scarring, but now we faced this new challenge. I felt frustrated by this break in our momentum, but I was still convinced that we could advance medical breakthroughs while staying consistent to the principles of faith. Having come this far, I couldn’t be daunted by the obstacles. I repeated to myself the words Gwen’s father had said, and I trusted that God would help us find a way to make the healing properties of the womb widely available to patients with eye injuries. I just needed the right idea, and it did come in time thanks in part to the help of my brother, Ming-yu.
In July of 1997, Ming-yu flew down to Miami from Boston to help me move to Nashville, Tennessee, where I had accepted a new job at Vanderbilt University. We hitched a U-Haul trailer to the back of my car, packed with everything I owned in the world. Gwen couldn’t get away for the long drive to my new job, but she was planning on a visit shortly after I settled in. I appreciated having my brother along for the trip, as I had taken care of him throughout his childhood, and now he had arrived to help me.
Ming-yu slammed the trailer door shut, yanked on the padlock to be sure it was closed securely, slid into the passenger seat, and I pulled the car onto the I-95 North out of Miami.
“How’s your amnion research project going?” he asked me as he leaned forward to turn up the air conditioning.
“The amniotic membrane transplants were successful on the rabbits, but for actual patients, we still need to find a better way to deliver the membranes to injured eyes, hopefully without having to suture them to the corneas, since suturing poses too many risks and often cannot be done immediately.”
I gripped the steering wheel and maneuvered through traffic, the white lines on the interstate whizzing quickly past us. As I considered the benefits of the amniotic membrane, I wondered how I would find the solution I was seeking. I told Ming-yu I had been pondering this issue, praying to God for a creative solution, and trusting that God would again grant me wisdom.
I glanced over and saw Ming-yu pull out a bottle of eye lubricant to moisten his contact lenses.
At that moment, an idea came to me.
“That’s it!” I shouted.
“That’s what?” asked Ming-yu. His head was tilted back as he squeezed a few drops into each eye.
“Contact lenses!” I said with a rush of excitement.
It seemed so straightforward that I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it sooner. People had been putting contact lenses into their eyes for decades. We could fuse the amniotic membrane to the underside of a contact lens, package them in bottles, and store them in emergency rooms around the world. Anyone with basic medical training could insert a contact lens onto a patient’s injured eye. I realized that Ming-yu’s question and my reaffirmation of my trust in God had brought about the inspiration of this simple and beautiful idea, and the answer to my long quest for a solution that aligned faith and science.
I laughed out loud, and then reached across the front seat and threw a playful punch at my brother’s shoulder.
“Thanks, Ming-yu!”
“I didn’t really say anything, but you’re welcome.”
As soon as I landed in Nashville, a friend and I sent paperwork to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for two patents on the amniotic membrane contact lens, one for chemical injuries and another for laser corneal treatments. The patent process could take a year or two, so in the meantime I continued my research using the traditional method of suturing the membranes onto patients’ corneas. The amniotic membrane transplant would play a crucial role in the reconstructive eye surgeries I performed in the coming years.
* * *
During my fellowship at Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, I had been fully trained in cornea and laser refractive surgery. Throughout the late 1990s, the FDA rolled out a number of approvals on LASIK, which ushered in a new era in refractive surgery. Bascom Palmer bought its first laser in preparation for the first LASIK procedure at the institute. I used my expertise in laser physics to help the engineers set up the laser and calibrate it for surgery. After recruiting the first group of patients, I performed one of the first LASIK surgeries at Bascom Palmer, becoming part of history at the institute.
After nearly twenty years of laser physics and medical training, I was now working in and contributing to my chosen medical field, just as my father, mother, and the long line of doctors in our family had done. I felt deep gratitude that I was continuing this honored family tradition of healing.
I arrived in Nashville, Tennessee as the newly appointed director of the Vanderbilt Laser Sight Center. My job was to build the center from the ground up. During my tenure at Vanderbilt, I performed the first LASIK procedure in the school’s history. For about five years, I served as a consultant to the FDA Ophthalmic Device Panel for the first LASIK approval in the U.S. and worked for the FDA on approvals for a wide range of innovative refractive surgery technologies. I later started my own practice and became the first surgeon in the state to perform bladeless all-laser LASIK, then laser cataract surgery, and most recently the laser Kamra procedure.
Before I moved to Nashville, I didn’t know much about the city besides its reputation for country music, but as I settled into my new life, I grew to really like the area. The scenery around Middle Tennessee reminded me of my hometown of Hangzhou, with its rolling hills, deep valleys, rivers, and lakes. When I first arrived, Nashville was still a small city centered almost entirely on West End, which turned into Broadway on its descent into a kitschy, neon downtown full of honky-tonks and souvenir shops. But I loved that there also seemed to be churches on almost every corner. Between my work at Vanderbilt and my life in this Christian community, I saw not only opportunities for professional development, but also for personal and spiritual growth. Now I just needed to convince Gwen to move to Nashville.
By 1997, Gwen and I were into the third year of our relationship. I was certain she would love the warm weather and Christian community in Nashville. She could find a job as an ophthalmologist, perhaps in my own department at Vanderbilt, and we could finally be together without the control of her parents.
While I was trying to convince Gwen to move, she was having major discussions with her parents. She didn’t mention all the details, but I could tell the arguments were intense. No matter how much our relationship solidified, one thing would never change—I could never stop being Chinese—and as long as I wasn’t Caucasian, her mother’s attitude toward us wouldn’t budge. Despite her mother’s continued objections, Gwen and I wanted to get married, and we continued to move slowly but surely in that direction.
In October of 1998, a little more than a year after my move to Nashville, Gwen and I decided to get engaged. We went ring shopping while we were both in Chicago for an ophthalmology meeting. The one we both loved the most had a beautiful round diamond weighing a little over a carat, set in white gold. Unfortunately it was way beyond what I could afford at the time, as I had just started my first job, and was paying heavily on student loans.
We stood there staring down at the rows and rows of diamond rings, sparkling against the darkness of the black velvet-lined glass cases.
“I’ll buy it first, and you can pay me back later!” Gwen suggested.
I looked at her, partly shocked and partly amused. “What? Are you sure? Why don’t I just save up for it? You still haven’t even announced this to your mother anyway.”
“I know you’re just starting out, but I’ve been working for several years now so I can do this.”
“It’s not very manly of me, you know.”
But Gwen was eager. She obviously wanted this marriage as much as I did. I was moved by her gesture, and I felt convinced that she was as committed to our being together as I was. Gwen bought the ring, and I promised I would pay her back as soon as I could. We were both thrilled to be so close to an official engagement. I reflected back on seeing her years ago in the elevator at Wills Eye Hospital, meeting up with her after her trip to China, and keeping our long distance relationship alive from distant corners of the country. After nearly five long years filled with love and pain, joy and stress, it looked like we were finally going to make it!
Following the trip to Chicago, I wanted to give Gwen some space to discuss the impending engagement with her mother. I knew the ordeal put a strain on her, and even though we had already bought the ring, she still wouldn’t fully commit until her mother had given us her blessing.
I didn’t see Gwen again until November, a month later. We met in Columbus, Ohio for a dance performance that I’d told her she just couldn’t miss. At the Columbus airport, we stood there holding each other closely before I headed back to Nashville. I was about to be late for my flight, but she didn’t want me to leave. Her face was streaming with tears, cutting streaks through her makeup and causing her mascara to run down her cheeks. I couldn’t understand why she was so emotional, but she looked beautiful—albeit comical—with her messed up makeup. I stopped to take her photo before I rushed to catch my flight.
It turned out to be the last photo I would ever take of her.
After that visit, she stopped talking to me and wouldn’t return my calls. I wanted to go up to Ohio and find out what was wrong, but I waited. I wanted to give her time, but I was also afraid to know the truth. After weeks of silence, Gwen finally reached out and confirmed what I had feared all along.
One day in January of 1999, I received a bulky letter in the mail. When I opened it, I found a long, crumpled letter written in Gwen’s handwriting, page after page smeared with tear stains. She wrote that she couldn’t marry me after all—not without her family’s blessing—and her mother simply would not give her consent. After nearly five years, she didn’t want to keep my life on hold anymore, nor cause any further hurt for me or for us.
It was over.
The very first letter I had received from Gwen back in Philadelphia when she returned from China in 1994 had been so full of promise … and her last letter dashed all hope.
Five years gone, just like that. Five years of enduring her parents’ objections to our relationship, all because I was an ethnic minority and not Caucasian. I felt so defeated. Throughout those years, Gwen and I had arrived at several moments where we were ready to give in to her parents and give up on our relationship. But our love was stronger than the challenges, and we had fought against her parental objection and persisted through them all. After we bought the ring, I thought we had finally figured things out. Gwen seemed resolved to marry me in spite of her mother’s hostility toward me.
We had come so close, so close! The expectations that had been mounting, the hope of finally being together, came crashing down. I was awash in grief.
A few days later, I received a very different type of letter. This one was from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, notifying me that I had been awarded the first of two patents for my amniotic membrane contact lens invention. A process that had been conceived more than a decade ago in medical-school, for the good of all my future patients, was finally coming to fruition. I approached Vanderbilt University about starting EyeVU—a joint-venture biotechnology company—to create prototypes of the lenses, with the hope of an eventual commercial launch.
The two letters—from the patent office and from Gwen—rested on my desk for months, representing two extremes of emotion from elation to despair. Between the two letters, hovered the memory of my dinner conversations with Gwen’s father, who had given me so much encouragement to keep moving forward with both science and faith. God had finally granted me the wisdom I needed, but it was bittersweet because I longed to be at Gwen’s family table again, sitting across from her father as his son-in-law, sharing the good news about how we had persevered until we found the solution to our moral dilemma with fetal tissue research, and now we were enjoying victory with the amniotic membrane contact lens patent.
But now that would never happen. I would never be able to tell Gwen’s father that he had been right all along.
I didn’t write Gwen back, and I never called, no matter how much I missed her. I knew her mother wouldn’t ever change her mind. At first I couldn’t understand how Christians could discriminate against others like that. Christianity was supposed to be a religion rooted in love, so such blatant prejudice seemed downright ungodly. But when my relationship with Gwen failed, I came to a painful realization that the faith itself—and how people live out that faith—can sometimes be two entirely different things. Just because Gwen’s mother was controlling and unloving didn’t invalidate the Christian faith that the rest of her family and I shared. Learning to separate the faith itself from the behavior of some believers was a slow and painful process, but it also inspired me to live out my own Christian life more honestly, to be more open, and to embrace people different than me. I resolved that I would never treat anyone in such a discriminatory and unloving manner, no matter what a person’s ethnic background was.
While my relationship with Gwen didn’t culminate in marriage as I had hoped, the sense of failure was as poignant and arduous as it was at the end of my first marriage. Though the reasons for the failure of those two relationships were very different, my coping mechanism was the same—I retreated into the refuge of work. My research and clinical practice were more measurable and controllable, and less disappointing than the messiness of relationships.
While my romantic relationships seemed to always end in heartbreak, my work on the other hand had lasting and positive effect on people’s lives. It was through my patients that I would find my true calling and a certain selfless drive that ultimately would lead to love. One specific patient, a Mexican teenager named Francisco, altered the course of my career and he gave me a gift that I thought I would never be able to receive.