Continue Reading Below Advertisement

Turns out, eyes can be tricked into accepting certain other parts of the body as a part of them. The problem is, said body part needs to remain alive while in there, in order to avoid the scenario professionals like to call "Holy shit, you have a dead body part in your eye."

That's where teeth, which are used to cooperating with bone and ligament, come in. The idea of implanting a modified tooth into an eye to act as a camera has been around from the sixties, but a number of horrific complications, including the tooth dropping off from inside the eye, didn't do much for the popularity of the procedure until recent modifications made it rather more survivable.

Getty

They can have you healthy enough to star in a del Toro film within a month of surgery.

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

How the actual operation went down reads out like a strange, surgery-themed game of MadLibs. First, they extracted a canine. Then they filed it into a suitable shape, drilled a hole and placed a plastic lens in said hole. The lens-tooth was then implanted in her shoulder to heal, while the damaged part of her eye was removed and replaced with skin from inside her cheek.

By now, the eye was so confused that it assumed it's as normal as anything else that's been happening recently to have a tooth inside it. So they take out the tooth and stick it in the eye to act as a sort of camera lens that replaces the damaged eye tissue and also, incidentally, turns the whole eye into a red ball of horror that has a freaking camera lens sticking out.

Businesswire

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

But here's the thing: That whole clusterfuck works like a dream. After just a few hours of the bandages being off, Thornton was able to recognize faces. She is already able to read newspapers with a magnifying glass and is expected to get even better as she fully heals.

Yeah, sure, the eye may look like a horror movie prop, but who are we to argue with results? The woman got her vision back, for Pete's sake.

Erik Germ is the owner of hugefrigginarms.com and can be found on Twitter.

For more gutsy badassery, check out 7 People Who Cheated Death (Then Kicked It In The Balls) and 6 WWI Fighter Pilots Whose Balls Deserve Their Own Monument.