In February, Leela was diagnosed with a cancer in her right eye.
We had taken her to her pediatrician because every now and then we thought there
was a strange reflection in her eye but we could never see anything wrong when
we looked. The pediatrician sent us that afternoon to a pediatric
ophthalmologist at Children's Hospital, and after keeping us in the dark through
an extensive examination, he diagnosed a rare cancer of the eye called
retinoblastoma. The conversation started with something like, "your daughter has
a malignant tumor in her eye; we have to remove her eye to save her life."
It was quite a shock. We were getting progressively worried as the
day went on and it became apparent that she was not seeing out of her right eye.
It was obvious that it was something serious since every resident in
ophthalmology had a look in her eye. Even so, we were not prepared for what we
heard.
The large tumor had destroyed her retina, so she was not seeing
out of that eye and there was no hope of ever regaining the lost vision. The
tumor also threatened her life since if untreated would spread to the brain. We
were devastated to face such a decision, but the only reasonable course of
action was to remove her right eye and the tumor with it in order to save her
life.
The next day we were back at Children's Hospital for a CT scan in
the morning and to meet the surgeon in the afternoon. We were told that the CT
scan showed no evidence of any cancerous masses outside of the eye. While we did
not fully appreciate it at the time, it was very good news.
Two days later and only three days after our initial visit to the
pediatrician Leela had her eye removed.
The biopsy of the tumor and the optic nerve found that the cancer
had spread to the optic nerve so the specialist oncologists recommended that she
undergo 6 months of chemotherapy.