‘They had to remove Jared’s eye,’ my wife said.
I stood speechless for a full half minute, then nodded, trying to hold back the tears. My son’s life would never be the same.
It all started two weeks beforehand, when we noticed Jared was favouring his left eye. When he looked into the light, the pupil of his right eye looked dull and lifeless. The optometirist told us to book an appointment with an eye specialist. He suspected something, but didn’t want us to worry unnecessarily.
Under general anaesthetic, the surgeon looked, and confirmed that Jared had Retinal Blastoma – a cancer of the eye. He explained that, left untreated, the cancer could spread to the other eye and eventually to his brain. The safest treatment would be to remove the eye.
Jared was an absolute star during the whole thing. He was eighteen months old, but far beyond his years. The operation was in the morning, we took him home in the early afternoon, and when his sister came home from nursery school he was playing with her and running around like he’d just had a flu vaccination or something. A huge bandage covered his face and eye, but it mattered little to him.
The lab tests came back a week later, saying that the surgery went well, and that all of the cancer seemed to have been removed. The nerves between the eyeball and the brain had been free of cancer cells. Nevertheless, Jared would have to undergo a series of chemotherapy.
Every six weeks, Jared had to have needles inserted into his wrist, and endure two different types of chemicals blended into his blood stream. The treatment would take anything up to four hours at a time.
Jared had six treatments over an eight month period and never complained once. He sat patiently in the cancer ward, playing with other cancer patients, colouring, charming the nurses and generally being a damn good kid. Even when he threw up for a day or two afterwards, he didn’t complain. We had explained to him why the chemotherapy was necessary, and the nearly two-year-old person nodded and went off to chat with his friends about it.
In the end, it was a good thing that we decided that the best course of action would be to remove his eye, because some of the other parents hesitated. One child eventually went blind in both eyes. Another had cryotherapy to attempt to reduce the size of the cancer cells, but he lost sight in one eye in the process.
Children with cancer are absolutely amazing! We spoke with many of them, and their spirits lifted me up, their intelligence astounded me and their acceptance of their situation was humbling. I think that because their lives are seriously curtailed (in a lot of cases), they shove a whole lot more into a limited time.
They fitted Jared with an artificial eye, and he accepts the way he is, and that’s that. Children can teach us adults a lot about how to behave, can’t they?
Just remember, if you child is in this unfortunate situation, the thing to remember is, ‘He who hesitates, will lose sight.’
David Owen Nunes
David is many faceted, fascinating, fastidious, fair, fabulous and the other F word. He works in the Pensions Industry, plays occasional golf, and dreams of being able to write full time.
