Retinoblastoma. A word I am still struggling to say, a word that means cancer. Bilateral Retinoblastoma, a rare cancer of the eyes, makes up about 3% of cancers, mainly affects young children. My sweet baby Jamison has cancer in both eyes, as of today, we know he at least as one large tumor and 3 smaller tumors in each eye. The good news is that it's curable. A curable cancer is a manageable cancer. I don't really know much about our journey other than it began yesterday. Well, it began a few months ago, I guess, but yesterday was the day we heard the C word. I know a lot of people who have survived cancer and some who haven't fared so well. But to be hit with that for your 13 month old child is just heartbreaking.
Jamison's left eye would lose focus and drift, it had been occurring for months. When I first brought it up to his pediatrician at his 9 month well-baby check, he suggested we just keep an eye on it, to see if it got worse. I didn't push the issue, just assuming it was a lazy eye and maybe things would improve. At his 12 month appointment, I brought it up again. It seemed to be getting worse, more people were noticing it and I wanted to address it while he was young. I read about lazy eye surgeries and how children could lose sight if the eye wasn't fixed, I didn't want that to happen. So after about a week I hear back from the office with an appointment for the Opthamologist. His appointment was for November 10, 2010 at 1:30. The timing wasn't great but for whatever reason we decided to keep the appointment and just rearrange our schedules accordingly. At first look Dr. Cheeseman (yes that is his name) agreed that it looked like a lazy eye. He wanted to dilate his eyes to just make sure there wasn't anything else causing the eye to drift because there were uncommon diseases that could do that.
To be continued...
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