Man sees newborn daughter after docs save eye

On the night before the wife of Moshe Schreibhand of Rishon Lezion gave birth to their first child, he went fishing in the waters off Ashdod with his brother-in law and ended up at Kaplan Medical Center with a fishhook stuck in his left eyeball.

Emergency surgery performed at the Rehovot hospital saved his sight.

Kaplan doctors called on amateur and professional fishermen to be extremely careful when hurling their fishing rods, especially at night and when other people – bathers, passersby or other fishermen – are nearby.

The strange incident occurred two weeks ago.

The 28-year-old husband wanted to calm down before the delivery and decided to enjoy his hobby of fishing.

When his brother-in-law released the cord with the hook and pulled it back, he was unaware of the fact that Schreibhand had been hit by it in the eye – until he screamed from pain.

He was evacuated to Kaplan, where ophthalmologists rushed him to the operating room to carefully extricate the metal hook, which dug at a depth of one centimeter into his eye.

They sewed up his eyeball with three stitches and saved his sight.

The next day, when the husband was recovering from surgery, his wife, Shiraz, gave birth to their first child, a girl they named Alya. He was examined by Prof. Ayala Pollack and others in the department, who said he would be able to see his daughter with both eyes.

He is now receiving intensive antibiotics to prevent infections in the eye. He was fortunate that the hook did not reach vital parts of the eye.

Senior ophthalmological surgeons Dr. Gai Kleinman and Dr. Danny Rappaport urged fishermen to be extremely careful. Schreibhand said that while he has always been very careful during his frequent bouts of fishing, his own father was snagged in the hand by a fish hook several years ago.

He never dreamed it would happen to him.