It’s in your eyes

— Originally posted on 26th January 2009)

1.1- It’s in your eyes

There’s a saying that ‘Our eyes are the windows to our soul,’ but what happens when you only have one eye? Is the view to the soul lost?If the heart operation wasn’t bad enough on mum, then the diagnosis on my eye would be a devastating blow. Just under a month after I was born it was noted the left eye was progressively smaller to the right and it had contained some form of white-gray discharge. Mum had also noticed the left eye never reacted to movement and changes in light. At the time, Doctors at Mt Elizabeth Hospital where I was born weren’t sure as to what the problem was and their only diagnosis was that I had a Retinoblastoma, a form of Cancer in the eye. It was deemed my left eye was already blind and if not removed they feared it may spread to my right eye and render me blind. The only option: to remove the left eye. Mum wasn’t convinced and demanded a second opinion, the Doctors advised if the operation was not done soon the cancer would spread, and that left her no choice. The eye was removed completely and later replaced with an artificial eye.
Some week’s later mum gained a second opinion and the investigation and diagnosis revealed that, in fact there was no cancer in the eye and it was only a Retinal Detachment, and was easily fixable and I would still have maintained vision in my left eye.
Since the left eye was replaced by the artificial, mum took extra care with the artificial eye and my right eye. Now I had the one good eye the rules were:
– Never strain your eyes
– Wear glasses at all times
– Don’t cross your eyes
– Always turn your head when you look.
Mum still holds a anger towards the doctors that installed the fear of possible cancer as she feels they’d robbed me of a good vision in both eyes, I tell her it doesn’t matter., what’s done is done and there is no going back. I see out of one but my sight has changed. I can see all and more.