Florida Catholic | A Mother's Faith

Courtesy Photo
Three year-old Lindsey Adams isn't concerned that her temporary prosthetic left eye is not the same color her right one. She likes it that way, her mother said, because it matches the color of her brother Ethan's eyes.

Toddler loses eye, mother keeps faith

AMY FERRARA SMITH | FLORIDA CATHOLIC STAFF

Published: 01.18.08

GULF BREEZE | Nicole Chase Adams stood over her 3-year-old daughter’s hospital bed. Across the room, another mother did the same.

“What kind of God would do this?” she remembered the woman saying.

Doctors were treating both toddler girls in the room for a malignant eye tumor that affects children under 5 years of age. It is genetic, even though neither Adams nor her husband, Neil Adams, has a family history of the disease.

“I told her, ‘God got us here and saved (our daughter). So she’ll have one eye. Big deal.’ I told the woman that her child is still there,” said Adams.

On Oct. 30, 2007, her husband noticed a film covering daughter Lindsey’s left eyeball. When Adams looked, she noticed that Lindsey’s left pupil was dilated and that the eyeball was transparent; she could see right through it.

“I played a vision game with her,” Adams said.

She covered Lindsey’s left eye so that the toddler would only be able to see out of the right one. Lindsey passed her mother’s sight test. Then Adams covered her daughter’s right eye, and the toddler asked her mother to take her hand away because she could not see. Adams knew then that something was wrong.

At the advice of doctors in Gulf Breeze, the couple took their daughter to a specialist in Miami who confirmed the diagnosis Adams had been expecting: bilateral retinoblastoma.

“The Lord works in mysterious ways,” she said. Three days prior to the couple’s suspicions about Lindsey’s eye, Adams had happened across an article describing the disease. As she read, she had no way of knowing that soon doctors would diagnose her own daughter with the same malady. It wasn’t a coincidence, she believes — it was God preparing her for what was soon to come.

Before the diagnosis, Lindsey attended St. Ann Discovery School at St. Ann Parish in Gulf Breeze. Adams’ mother, Shirley Chase, has been the director of the school for several years, and Adams herself worked there when she was 18. Adams’ 5-year-old son, Ethan, insists on attending the school’s after-care program when he finishes his kindergarten day at Oriole Beach Elementary.

Brother and sister look strikingly alike now, Adams said. Because the tumor in Lindsey’s left eye was so large, doctors suggested that she undergo six cycles of chemotherapy treatment in Miami. Fortunately, there were no tumors in her optic nerve, which could affect the brain. When Lindsey started to lose her hair, Adams said, she helped her daughter shave it off. Lindsey was eager to look like her big brother.

When they removed her left eye, doctors made Lindsey a temporary prosthetic, which they mistakenly painted a different color than her natural shade. Adams laughed over the phone as if she had no worries. “It matches her brother’s eyes,” she said.

Eventually, doctors will make Lindsey a permanent eye. When she stops growing, she will receive a new eye that has the ability to move. For now, she wears shatterproof glasses to protect what she has.

Even though Lindsey’s right eye had passed her mother’s vision test, doctors did find two small tumors there. They were removed and now every three weeks, the family travels to Miami for laser treatments that will shrink the tumors to a nonthreatening size.

“I had a strong faith to begin with,” said Adams, “but it’s been tested.” Her brother, she added, was particularly angry with God over his niece’s condition. Even though she knew that bilateral retinoblastoma affects only one out of every 20,000 children, she asked her brother, “What made us so special? It has to happen to someone,” she told him.

The family has only lived on the Gulf Coast since May 2007, when they moved from Connecticut. This spring, they plan to move back North, where Neil Adams’ job with Cox Communications offered him a higher salary to help pay for Lindsey’s medical bills.

“It’s become a way of life,” said Adams. “In (Lindsey’s) lifetime, she will always see doctors. There will always be a risk of other cancers.”

Adams stopped talking into the phone to offer her daughter a Popsicle. In the background, a high-pitched toddler’s voice asked for two.

“We’ll see,” her mother said. We’ll see.

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Toddler loses eye, mother keeps faith

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