Ben's Diagnosis

I'm going to go back in time a little here as I haven't written anything on the blog about our lives for the last month.  One month ago, tomorrow (8/12/13), I took Ben and Lincoln to the eye doctor for a routine exam.  Ben had not been since 19 months old and at the time, there was no need for further follow up.  I had no concerns about Ben's vision...I was simply taking Lincoln to get his eyes checked and figured we'd get Ben checked also just to make sure his vision was still good.

Dr. Levine immediate told us he saw something in Ben's eye and sent us the following day to the retina specialist within his group.  We saw Dr. Mcluskey on Tuesday morning and she told us there was definitely something in his eye and tried to get us into see the retina specialist at the Emory Eye Clinic that afternoon.  We ended up getting an appointment for the following day.  We saw Dr. Hubbard at the Emory Eye Clinic on Wednesday (8/14/13) where he told us Ben had Retinoblastoma.  This started us on a road we never thought we'd travel.  Our smart and funny 4 year old, had cancer.  Lots has happened since then but we feel like we are on the other side of this nightmare.  Ben had his eye removed on 8/29/13.  One week later, on 9/4/13, we got the pathology report that Ben's cancer appeared to be contained in his eye and he did not need the chemo we'd been told was a possibility.

Ben returns to school tomorrow and begins his life without an eye and having beat cancer at 4 years old.  I will post some pictures from the last 13 days as he's recovered amazingly from his surgery.  He will get a prosthetic eye in October and sometime before that, we should find out the genetic testing results.  I will save the letters I wrote to family and friends during this time recapping the process we went through to learn about this disease and research the possible treatment options and how we made it through the past month.  We are on the road to recovery and have decided our little guy is amazing and kids are incredibly resilient - much more so than their parents.

Thank you to everyone for all of your prayers, thoughts, letters, emails, texts, gifts, meals, etc.  We appreciate it so much.  We feel fortunate to have such love surrounding us.  Thank you.