By: Ashley Yarchin

KSDK — It shook the island nation of Haiti and today ripples of that devastating earthquake are still being felt worldwide, especially in St. Louis’s Cardinal Glennon Children’s Medical Center.

Two months ago, Marck Jonis was born in a refugee camp in Haiti to a mother who, because of hardships after the quake, quickly realized she couldn’t care for him.  She left him at orphanage where he was put in the arms of an American volunteer, Melissa Warrender.

“So I spent all day holding him and cuddling and snuggling and that was basically it,” Warrender said.  “I knew that if he needed help, I wanted to help out.”

A look into his crying, clouded eyes revealed a problem, one that required corneal transplants with the help of teams at SLU and Cardinal Glennon.  This week, Marck was brought to St. Louis for the first of two transplants.

“It gives him a good shot at least to get some useful vision,” said Dr. Sean Edelstein, the boy’s opthomologist.  Dr. Edelstein first examined Marck via Skpe.

A two-hour operation on Thursday went well.

“Any improvement in vision would be certainly successful and Haiti’s obviously, the earthquake was completely catastrophic so any kind of beacon of hope or good stories out of the aftermath of that disaster would be very good,” the doctor added.

“You easily get attached to someone this cute and sweet and it will be difficult if he has to go back but we’re just here to help and to do what we need to do to give him the gift of sight, if that means sending him back and is we get to keep him we’ll certainly be glad to do that, too,” Warrender said.

The infant will head to New York with his host-mom in the coming days.  He’s expected to be back at Cardinal Glennon in six weeks for a check up on his right eye and a transplant on his left.