18 Artwork by Paris Alexander
Still Rockin’
BY LAURA ERTEL
Sculptor Captures His Own Experience with Eye Disease
W
hen Paris Alexander’s vision started feeling a bit off four years ago, he thought he’d gotten a shard of stone in his eye. As a sculptor, that’s a hazard of the trade. But when the visual distortion didn’t subside, Alexander went to an ophthalmologist, where he got some surprising, disheartening news: The Raleigh artist was diagnosed with wet macular degeneration. “At first I was terrified,” he recalls. “Particularly as a visual artist, I thought this would be a ‘death sentence’ for me. But before I became a full-time artist, I had been a research specialist at the Duke Cancer Center, and I knew that people come to Duke from all over the world. So I immediately made an appointment with [retinal specialist] Michael Allingham, MD, and he started treating me right away to keep the abnormal blood vessel which causes the disease from growing or bleeding. “If I had waited to start treatment, I could be blind in one eye right now,” Alexander believes. “But because of Dr. Allingham’s quick action, as well as
