Wearing My Independence Like A Crown

When your cat trusts you so much that she brings her newborns to you for shelter and protection. 

Think about it. In real life, the person that's bottling up all their emotions is not the one that's brooding in the corner and snaps at you for trying to befriend them. More often than not, it's that friendly person in your circle who makes easy conversation with you, laughs with you, and listens and gives advice whenever you're upset. But you never see them upset, in fact they seem to have endless patience for you and everything around them—and so you call them their friend, you trust them. And only after months of telling them all your secrets do you realize…

The good news? It's trending because of posts like these.

Twenty people who were blind or on the verge of being so have had some or all of their sight restored thanks to a food industry byproduct — pig skin.

Researchers from Linköping University and LinkoCare Life Sciences AB were able to give the group their vision back with a special corneal implant made from medical-grade collagen from porcine skin, a purified food industry byproduct that's used in FDA-approved medical devices for treating glaucoma. The implant was given to those who suffer from diseased corneas, the outermost and transparent layer of the eye, an issue that affects millions of people worldwide.

Along with limited donor availability, the typical treatment, which requires doctors to surgically replace a cornea and sew it into place, also risks graft rejection, healing complications, infections, astigmatism and the need for long-term support. The new method, however, allows doctors to insert the implant into the existing cornea, requires no stitches and incision is minimally invasive with either an advanced laser or by hand.

"The operations were free from complications; the tissue healed fast; and an eight-week treatment with immunosuppressive eye drops was enough to prevent rejection of the implant," a press release for the study states. "With conventional cornea transplants, medicine must be taken for several years. The patients were followed for two years, and no complications were noted during that time."