Holland
Galesburg native a 'Miracle Worker'
Opthalmologist featured on new medical reality show
Monday, March 6, 2006
GALESBURG - A former Galesburg man, now the director of cornea services at the Cincinnati Eye Institute's satellite office in Englewood, Ohio, will be one of two doctors featured tonight on a new medical reality series on ABC, "Miracle Workers."The show will be on WQAD-TV 8, channel 8 on Insight Cable in Galesburg, and WHOI-TV 19, channel 3 on cable, at 9 p.m. Dr. Edward Holland also is a Professor of opthalmology at the University of Cincinnati.
Joan Holland, Edward's mother, still lives in Galesburg. She is the mother of eight children, including six sons. Now retired, she is the former director of the OB/GYN Department at OSF St. Mary Medical Center.
Edward Holland graduated from Costa Catholic School, then from Galesburg High School in 1974. He obtained his bachelor's degree from Drake University, attended medical school at the Loyola-Stritch School of Medicine in Chicago and had a residency in opthalmology at the University of Minnesota and fellowships at the University of Iowa and the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md.
"I did speak with Edward about the show," Joan Holland said. "It's mostly about the patients."
According to the Web site of the Cincinnati Enquirer, Dr. Holland, 49, of Union, Ohio, is featured performing two surgeries to restore the eyesight of 34-year-old Todd Heritage of Kent, Ohio, who had been blind since the age of 12. Holland uses stem cells from a donor's eye and combines them with the corneal surface cells from a cadaver and transplants them into Heritage.
The Enquirer reported that ABC came to the Cincinnati Eye Institute because it performs about 100 of these operations a year.
"It will be great to get this story out to the people who could benefit from this procedure," Holland told the Cincinnati newspaper.
Joan said her son was always a good student. "Ed does work very hard and is very caring," she said.
And, in retrospect, it is not surprising he chose this particular career path. His father, Dr. John Holland, was an opthalmologist.
Joan said there's no doubt she'll be in front of the TV watching ABC at 9 p.m. She said one of Edward's friends works at Wells Fargo Bank in Galesburg, "so she's e-mailing all his friends."
Even though her son is featured, Joan has not seen a preview of the show.
"I haven't seen it, so I don't know what it's all about," she said, but the pride she feels for her son and his accomplishments was enough to overcome her reluctance to do a newspaper interview.
"Yes, I am very proud," she said.
