A Maryland grandfather says the diabetes drug Ozempic left him legally blind, and he is suing the manufacturer for failing to warn patients about the risk.

Todd Engel, 63, was prescribed Ozempic in 2023 to help manage diabetes. About four months later, doctors diagnosed him with nonarteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy, or NAION, a condition that cuts blood flow to the optic nerve and is sometimes called an “eye stroke.” He later lost vision in both eyes, lost the career he built over decades, and filed a lawsuit against Novo Nordisk alleging the company failed to adequately warn patients and doctors.

Fox News Digital reported Engel’s account after an on-camera interview in which the Howard County Highways heavy equipment operator and truck driver described how sudden darkness ended the working life he had planned to leave on his own terms.

Engel first noticed trouble on New Year’s Eve 2024. He had just gotten out of the shower and was getting ready for work when the right eye went black.

"I first noticed it on New Year's Eve, 2024. I had just gotten out of the shower, was getting ready to go to work. And I said to Shelley, ‘I can't see in my right eye. It's totally black. It's totally dark in my right eye,’"

He said he was horrified. Further testing, including at Johns Hopkins’ Wilmer Eye Institute, pointed to NAION. Blood work came back in a normal range for him. Blood pressure was fine. He was told he could go back to work.

Because neither he nor his doctors, in the family’s telling, knew of a possible link between semaglutide and NAION, he kept taking Ozempic. About 10 months later, vision failed in the left eye. Doctors told him no medicine or surgery could bring the sight back. He stopped the drug at once.

He says the drug took a working man’s livelihood

Engel held a commercial driver’s license for nearly 40 years and spent about that long in the field as a heavy equipment operator and truck driver for Howard County Highways. That work is gone. So is the independence that came with it.

Sudden medical blows can revise a family’s daily map overnight, much as a sudden bypass surgery can force a public figure into an unplanned fight for recovery. Engel’s case is quieter, but the damage is permanent in his account.

He now counts steps to move through his own house: 10 from the parking lot, nine down to the basement, 13 up to the bedroom. Grandchildren take him by the hand and coach him through turns. He has four of them. He is 64, he said, and finds the dependence embarrassing.

"I didn't go blind, I had my vision taken from me, which was catastrophic to me and to my family."

His wife, Shelley Engel, said testing did not turn up another common factor beyond Ozempic and that the loss touched every part of their lives.

"It has completely changed every aspect of our lives,"

Engel put the personal cost in plain terms. He can no longer do the mechanical work that defined him. He will not see his wife’s face again, or watch his children and grandchildren the way he once did, or play ball with them.

"I wake up in the dark, I go to sleep in the darkness."

Lawsuit centers on warnings, not a settled medical verdict

Engel has sued Novo Nordisk, the Denmark-based maker of Ozempic, alleging the company failed to adequately warn patients and doctors about a potential vision-loss risk. His attorney, Jonathan Orent, is co-lead counsel in nationwide litigation involving GLP-1 drugs, a class that includes Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, and Zepbound, and says hundreds of patients are pursuing claims that the medications caused NAION.

Abrupt health disasters leave little room for second chances, a reality underscored when a pastor died after a spinal injury on a family trip. Engel’s warning is simpler: he wants other patients to know what he says he was never told.

Orent framed the case as a fight over information. The legal team wants a warning on the U.S. Ozempic label similar to information already given to patients and doctors in Europe.

"It's amazing what just a simple warning can do,"

He added that the case is about information. Engel said that if he or his doctor had known the risk, he would have refused the drug and managed the diabetes another way rather than jeopardize his eyes.

Novo Nordisk disputes a causal link

Novo Nordisk rejects the core claim. Liz Skrbkova, head of U.S. Media and Stakeholder Relations for the company, told Fox News Digital that a causal relationship between GLP-1 receptor agonists, including semaglutide, and NAION cannot be confirmed based on the totality of data.

"A causal relationship between GLP-1RAs, including semaglutide, and NAION cannot be confirmed based on the totality of data,"

Skrbkova said the company’s analysis of randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trials found very few confirmed NAION cases and no increased incidence among patients taking semaglutide. Novo continues to monitor NAION in routine drug-safety surveillance, she said, and believes the personal injury lawsuits filed in the United States are without merit. The company is defending them in court.

The reporting itself notes that a causal relationship between the medications and the condition has not been definitively established, even as lawsuits allege insufficient warnings. That gap between allegation and proof is exactly why labels, consent, and clear risk language matter to patients who must weigh trade-offs in real time.

Official findings after sudden tragedies can take time to settle the public record, as when a medical examiner confirmed blunt force trauma in a high-profile crash death. In Engel’s civil case, the courts will test the warning claims while the science remains contested.

His message to other patients is direct

Engel and his wife say they are speaking publicly so others can decide with open eyes. He urged people to research the drug for themselves and not assume silence on a label means silence on risk.

"Do the research for yourselves to make sure that my catastrophic injuries do not happen to you or anybody else,"

If the family’s warning helps one person, he said, that is enough for him and Shelley. He still frames the injury as something done to him, not a quiet fade into old age: people should retire when they choose, he said, not when a medical injury takes the livelihood first.

Patients deserve plain warnings before they roll the dice on blockbuster drugs, not after the lights go out.