First Eye Exam

In Oct 2003, my husband, Craig, decided to take up digital photography and bought an awesome Nikon camera. He proceeded to photograph everything in his path, which, much of the time, was our 3-year-old, Joey.

As the photos began piling up in the office, Craig noticed something. Joey's left eye always seemed to reflect a white spot in the photos. You know, like the red eye photos you see once in awhile? Except it was a white/yellowish eye. Craig kept calling this to my attention, but I just figured it was the same thing as the red eye. Keep in mind that Craig is a very protective father - kind of a worry wart about his boy. And so I wrote this off as just another one of his worry wart moments. Until one day, Craig covered Joey's eyes, one at at a time, and asked him what he could see. Joey could see with his right eye. But with his left eye...he struggled. Well, that convinced me to take him to the eye doctor for an eye exam.

At the appointment with the optometrist, Joey obviously had trouble seeing with his left eye. He was given drops to dilate his eyes. With Joey's eyes dilated, the optometrist examined him further, but couldn't get a good look because Joey was kinda squirmy. Finally, the Dr. said that he could see a "mass" in there and wanted us to see their opthalmologist, as soon as possible. He made a phone call and set us up to see him in their other office that afternoon at 2pm .

With an hour to wait before I had to leave for the 2pm appointment, I decided to call the ladies from church to get them praying. I called Cathy and told her what was happening. She said she'd get the prayer chain going and prayed with me on the line. I told her I had not called Craig yet. I didn't want to call him until I knew all the facts. He works on a mountain, and the last thing I wanted was for him to drive that road upset and nervous.

At the ophthalmologist's office, we once again went through the eye exam. When he was done, he closed the door, sat down and with a very serious look on his face, said that he wanted to send Joey to a specialist. He said if he HAD to take a guess on what it was, he would guess Retinoblastoma. He said he would make some calls and call me tonight and let me know where to go. He gave me his cell phone number and told me to call if I had any questions.

A doctor giving his cell phone number? I began to really be afraid.

I started the drive home. I called my sister...she wasn't home. My cell phone rang. It was Craig. I didn't want to have this conversation with him on the phone, but I couldn't pretend that nothing was wrong. So I told him everything.

When Craig got home, he started searching the internet for information on Retinoblastoma. I heard him walk out of the office and into our bedroom. When I walked in, he was on his face sobbing. In the 9 years that I've known Craig, this is the only time I'm seen him cry. My heart was broken for him. For us. Yet through this, I had a strange sense that God's eyes were right on us at this moment. That this whole thing did not take God by surprise. That He knew we would be traveling this road, and He was right there with us. I remembered back a few months when we had taken a trip to New York and had a stopover in Chicago. My high school friend, Jan, lived in Chicago now, and we had planned to meet there. When I saw her, she had talked about not fearing anything, about trusting God with everything. Even when bad things happened. Those words had rang in my ears since our meeting. I hadn't known why those words had kept coming back to me during these past few months. I now knew that God had used her to prepare me for this.

Later that night, we got a call from the ophthalmologist. He had scheduled us to see a specialist at the Children's Hospital in Los Angeles. We looked him up on the internet and found he was quite well-known in this specialty.

I had decided not to call my family until I knew for sure what was going on...until after we spoke with the specialist. But Craig said I should call them so they could be praying. I called my mom and told her. She said she would be praying. I called my sister and told her. Her reaction is one that, when I run it through my head, it always makes me cry. Nobody loves their nephews more than my sister. She and her husband would be praying.

Later that night, our friends Lou and Terri came over and we laid hands on Joey and prayed over his little sleeping body.

Tomorrow we'd be driving a couple hours into Los Angeles to see what the doctor had to say.