So we had a bit of a scare this past week. Last weekend we were visiting an old friend and their family, the Randolph’s. Many of you might be familiar with Jeanette, one of our original followers. She was the older sister to one of my friends from back in Augusta, Georgia. Joel and I were in the same scout troop at church. And his dad Jim, was our scoutmaster. I accredit him as to the reason, including my parents, as to how I became an Eagle Scout by the age of 13.5 years old (really young). Well we visited them while they were on vacation up in McCall Idaho. Unfortunately Joel, Jeanette’s younger brother, and my old friend wasn’t able to come due to work. We ate, caught up, and took pictures together. The next day we get a call from Jim (dad) and he said he didn’t want us to get stressed, but that he noticed a white glare in Mckeely’s left eye.
See of all people who would of caught something like this, it would be him. See he is more then my old scout master, he is an Optometrist. You know the guy that checks your eye and prescribes glasses and lens. Well he happened to be clicking away taking photos, like he always had. And in those photos he found a couple that had this white glare in the bottom of Mckeely’s left pupil. He wanted to warn us of a possible cause of this white partial ring. He said it might be Retinoblastoma. Cancer of the retina. This is a form of cancer that is commonly found as a glare in photos. Our eyes absorb light, but a mass of cancer reflects light and causes these white rings or circles. Well we were able to get into the Ophthalmologist office here in Boise , this past Friday. The tech checked her right eye and she was able to read the smallest letters on the screen across the room. We were so happy. Then came the left eye. They covered her right, and then started with the same small letters. She didn’t say anything. She turned her head, strained her eye, but still nothing. Then up came the next larger letters, then the next, and the next, all the way back up to the largest, and even then she barely made out the letter H. We sat there in amazement. We never knew she had problems, she was just so smart. We never saw her squint, or stare at things. The Doctor came in and said that her eye was lazy. Not in the way most think as there is two eyes looking in different directions. But as to the idea that her eye isn’t being used. She said that her brain really has shut down that eye because it was so bad. The doctor said that her brain is solely relying on the good right eye. This really worried us. Our hearts were already under our chairs. We asked if it was cancer, and she she didn’t think so, but she needed to dilate her eye. The drops were put in, and we waited 30 mins. The doctor came back in and looked again and said that it was not cancer. It is being caused by her eye being shortened by being very farsighted.
So the scare is over, she is just really farsighted. Over the next year or so, we will be trying to retrain her brain to use her left eye. By getting glasses, wating, and then later putting drops in her good eye to make it bulry, for a short while to train her brain to rely on her left eye even more.
Make sure you check your photos. Look for uneven white glares. In our photo above, you can see two white glares in each eye that are similar in each eye. That is just artifact glare from the flash. The small U shape in the left eye that has 2 white lines pointing to it is what to look for. Below is a photo of a child actually diagnosed with Retinoblastoma.
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