Give Back the Light by James C. Moore

Author:James C. Moore
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781626345638
Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group Press
Published: 2019-03-21T16:00:00+00:00

TEN

Last Light

In 1986, eight-year-old Mark Mullen was hiding from the light. An aggressive benign tumor was growing in his right eye and causing uveitis, an inflammation of the tissues of the eye that prompted a sensitivity to light. The tumor, which was releasing protein that created scar tissue and fibrosis on the retina, was simply another visual complication for the boy. His eyesight had been deteriorating from the day he was born. There was also the pain. Mullen was taking so many medications that he spent much of his early boyhood curled up in a ball and sleeping on the couch. His latest issue was that the protein secreted by the benign tumor had caused his retina to become completely detached, and he was without vision in the eye.

“I came out of the womb with eye problems,” Mullen told me more than three decades later. “My umbilical cord was wrapped around my neck, so there was some kind of oxygen-supply problem, and then that led to a misdiagnosis. I may have not had enough oxygen at birth for my eyes to be healthy, or the doctors might have responded the wrong way and gave me too much of an oxygen supplement. There’s no real way to know.”

Mullen’s diagnosis, ultimately, was identified as retinal angioma, which causes the proliferation of random, disorganized capillary growth and new blood vessels that leak protein to cause scarring, retinal detachment, and a dramatic degradation of vision. Mullen also suffered from strabismus—a wandering eye.

When Mullen was still a baby, his family got a referral to Steve Charles to seek treatment. Though they lived near Memphis, they had never heard of the doctor, and no one yet knew the extent of the child’s problems, but they had been told Charles might be able to help. The doctor often saw as many as 60 patients in one day, and Mark and his mother sat for hours in Charles’ crowded office, waiting for the boy’s turn to be examined.

“He really does want to help as many people as he can,” Mullen said. “But we were unprepared for the wait. My mother ran out of diapers, and I was tired and cranky and wouldn’t sleep. A nurse called us back for preliminary examination, and the first thing she did was shine a light in my eyes. I was none too happy and started crying. My mother was not impressed with Dr. Charles either.”

Mullen’s parents later took their son to a different optometrist and ophthalmologist for second opinions. The other doctors told Mullen’s parents there was a serious problem developing in his right eye, though they offered no detailed prognosis or cure.

The Mullens had no intention of returning to the Charles Retina Institute until a dinner guest persuaded them. The woman was a technician at Charles’ office, and she told Mullen’s mother that her son was much too young to be wearing such strong corrective lenses.

Charles agreed to see the boy on a Saturday morning, when no other patients were in his office and at no cost to Mullen’s family.

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