Tiny Tuesday - Fimo Model with a Story

This little model, made of luminous “Fimo” modelling clay, is only about 1cm tall so should qualify for Tiny Tuesday.
 
It’s rather special to me. It was one of several given to me about 20 years ago in my practice as an eye surgeon by a little girl who was about 7 or 8 at the time. She was almost totally blind, having been born extremely prematurely (at about 24 weeks of gestation) in 1987 and having developed a condition called “Retinopathy of Prematurity”. It’s a complicated condition but essentially the development of the arteries and veins of the retina (the “film” at the back of the eye) goes haywire, resulting in scarring and detachment of the retina. At the time she was born there was no proven treatment although there were some hunches about how to treat it. We did try but were ultimately unsuccessful. (The following year the results of a moderately successful treatment trial in the USA were published and since then treatment has been improved so that in most cases the eyesight can now be saved.)
 
Some children born as prematurely as this have other problems such as cerebral palsy. Happily this little girl didn’t suffer these. She was highly intelligent (she would often come to my clinic and read me stories from Braille) and as you can see she was remarkably good at modelling by feel. I think this model is of a hockey player. I don’t suppose she was aware that the Fimo she used is luminous, but I took advantage of this when I took the photo in the dark.
 
I won’t go into too many details of how I found a totally dark room for the photo, except to say that it was taken in the smallest room in the house…I’d better go and move my camera now in case anyone wants to visit that room…!! ;-)

Many thanks indeed to lizellen for hosting TT this month.