TISDALE — Communities show they are strongest when faced with challenges.
Paige Friswell was six months old when her mother, Kaylynn Friswell, took her in to see a doctor for an eye exam. She had a lazy eye and mom was concerned.
They did an eye exam for her, said there is nothing they could do for a lazy eye at this age and told her to come back in a month to see how the eye is.
A month later, Kaylynn was told they wouldn’t do anything for her lazy eye until she stopped using her eye all together. But they offered her a second opinion, so the doctor referred her to the Saskatoon Eye Surgeons.
“I think she took a look on my face, as in, ‘let’s get a second opinion’,” Kaylynn said.
She was booked in for September.
“On Sept. 25 I noticed that Paige’s right eye changed colour from blue to brown. We were booked in at Dr. Vasudha Erraguntla’s office for the following day on Sept. 26. When we got to our appointment at Dr. Vasudha Erraguntla’s office, the assistant was doing all of her testing and examining. The assistant said that we would just patch the good eye [left eye] for an hour a day to strengthen the right eye.”
The assistant put a patch on Paige’s left eye and Paige freaked right out and ripped the eye patch off immediately. The assistant then put the patch on Paige’s right eye and she didn’t react to it. This led the assistant to do further testing and noticed that when she shone a light or took a picture of Paige’s eyes her left eye had the red reflection and the right eye had a white reflection. The assistant immediately took this information to Dr. Vasudha Erraguntla who then saw her straight away.
Erraguntla explained that she wanted to perform an MRI right away to see what was wrong with Paige’s eye and to rule out cancer, as Paige’s paternal grandmother died from brain cancer. They went back home that day, but on their way back home they got a phone call that Erraguntla wanted to see Paige in her office the next day for further testing.
“They kind of somewhat warned me we could be back right away. So I was still in the process of, ‘okay, let’s get the next steps going,’” Kaylynn said.
At the end of the second day of testing, they asked Paige’s family to stay in Saskatoon overnight as they wanted to perform the MRI the following day.
Come the next day, they weren’t able to fit Paige in for an MRI but Dr. Ravi Nrusimhadevara, who works in the same office as Erraguntla, was able to fit Paige in for an ultrasound.
Through the ultrasound Nrusimhadevara didn’t notice any calcification in or around Paige’s eye, so he didn’t think there was large concern for cancer – but ultrasound findings also solidified the need for an MRI. He could not tell exactly what was going on with Paige’s eye until he saw the MRI report.
The MRI report showed that Paige has a detached retina. Paige would need surgery to fix it, but they wouldn’t perform it in the province as she was only 10 months old and they wouldn’t put her under general anesthesia.
“We’re going to go to the next doctor and have that surgery happen no matter where we have to go,” Kaylynn said.
The problem was they would have to go to Edmonton, something the family couldn’t afford.
“When we went to Edmonton we had to stay in a hotel, because Ronald McDonald House wanted a social worker for our case and we didn’t have a social worker, because we were all just fast paced.”
In response, family and friends as well as the Tisdale Lions, Arborfield Elks and Geo Electric in Arborfield pitched together money for her medical expenses.
Kaylynn said it felt overwhelming to have community come together for them.
“It’s really nice and it’s overwhelming, because I’m a stubborn person, I just try to do everything, so it’s been really nice to have a community. There has been some community members come forward to us, asking what kind of meals we would be interested in and stuff like that.”
“It was enough to get us there and back and we have some saved too for medical trips because we have to go to Saskatoon every month for testing.”
At Edmonton, the family saw Dr. Mark Greve.
Paige had persistent fetal vasculature (PFV) and neovascular glaucoma (NVG). PFV is a rare congenital developmental anomaly of the eye and NVG is a severe form of secondary glaucoma. Both cause serious vision problems.
“Dr. Mark Greve said that Paige probably had congenital eye malformation which is a birth defect. Congenital eye malformation is where the veins of the eye did not recede back during development and have now pulled the retina off her eye. There is a lot of scar tissue in her eye from this happening. Her right eye [the bad one] is smaller than her left eye due to this happening.”
Greve’s hope was he could remove some scar tissue and reattach the retina, but Paige will likely never have full sight out of that eye. She would most likely only be able to see light. If everything goes as planned the eye will be able to look normal to everyone and not cause her pain. If it doesn’t stop causing her pain, they would remove her eye.
“What they were trying to do with the surgery is reattach the retina and try to drain the blood and fluid out of her eye.”
Fast forward to November.
While the pressure in Paige’s eye is still high, she still has it with limited light sensitivity.
“We had a follow up for Paige in Saskatoon on Nov. 7 with Dr. Vasudha Erraguntla. Dr. Vasudha Erraguntla is happy with how her eye looks after the procedure. The pressure in her right eye was at 31,” Kaylynn said.
That’s much higher than the pressure in her healthy eye, but it’s significantly lower than it was, with it being 62 in Edmonton.
“Dr. Vasudha Erraguntla didn’t know how much the laser treatment has decreased the pressure and how much of the decrease is due to the drops. They would like the pressure to be below 21 in the end. Her left eye pressure is between 14 to 18 depending how worked up she is. We will be continuing with the two eye drops that we have and added another one to ease the friction on her eye. There is still blood in her eye which may never go or her body may absorb it.”
Paige now has to have pressure testing once a month with every other month in Saskatoon and the rest in Tisdale.
“Dr. Vasudha Erraguntla said it could take months to get the pressure down to where it should be. No doctor knows how the treatment will work or how long it will take to take full effect as there hasn’t been any research for this with an eye that didn’t develop at all. Dr. Vasudha Erraguntla said that Paige’s right eye [bad eye] could shrink in size as the pressure decreases which then we would look at placing a prosthetic over her eye to make them look the same or a covering over her eye to prevent friction so her eye isn’t irritated as much.”
Now, at one year old, Paige is as happy as any one year old is, receiving monthly tests to make sure her eye pressure is low enough to prevent migraines.
“She’s normally happy, she’s walking around, tiny,” Kaylynn said. “Pretty normal one year old type of stuff. And I always think it’s unfortunate that it has happened to her but at least it’s at a young age where she doesn’t know the difference. Because if she was an adult and lost an eye she would know the difference.”
“We’re on two drops in the morning and three drops at night,” Kaylynn said. “A huge thank you to everyone who has helped us and supported us.”
