Elly Smith, the vigilant mother of five year old Gracie Corrigan, first noticed something was wrong with her daughter’s eye when a photo flash made the girl’s eye glow strangely in the photo.
“I knew something was wrong with Gracie because her eye would be glowing, and it looked like she had a lazy eye.”
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Gracie Corrigan wearing an eye patch after her eye removal surgery
“I just started crying,” said Mrs. Smith. “When we left I remember walking to the car crying and shaking, and buckling Gracie in the car seat not knowing what I was going to do. I told Gracie ‘no matter what, you’re going to be okay’.”
“I made her an appointment the day I noticed it and her doctor referred us to an eye doctor, she continued. “I could tell something was wrong there and noticed the doctor’s chest getting red I was just asking what was wrong. When we found out we tried to explain as best we could to a two-year-old and said her eye had an ‘owee’ and that the doctor had to take it out.”
Treatment for the tumors was a difficult time. “The first two months were really hard on her,” Mrs Smith said. “She was nauseous and had [nerve damage] badly in her feet from the chemo.”
Gracie and her mom flew to Philadelphia to be seen at Will’s Eye Hospital. There, doctors counted 10 tumors in Gracie’s eye and optical nerve. They told her she need to have her eye removed the next day. “I was a mess. We [went] there for a second opinion but never expected she’d need her eye out the next morning,” said Gracie’s mom. Her husband Sean Corrigan joined them that night.
Photograph showing the spot in Gracie’s eye, which told her mom something was wrong
Surgeons operated just 16 days after her mother first noticed the white flash in Gracie’s eye, and she started chemotherapy two weeks later. Three months after her eye was removed, Gracie received her prosthetic eye. “The ocularist painted the eye while we were in there and then we came back the next day to pick it up. It was so emotional for me, I think I cried for the next 24 hours!” said Gracie’s mom. “When they make the eye you get to choose something to put on the top so you know which is the top of the eye Gracie chose a horse.”
“It was a hard day for me. Gracie had been wearing an eye patch since the removal and seeing the prosthetic eye just made it all real.”
For Gracie, she is free to go to school and live a normal life with no restrictions, but she does have to have her eyes regularly monitored. According to her mom, Gracie kept her spirits high. “Gracie was fine with it. She is so resilient. She even has taken her spare eye in for show and tell,” Mrs. Smith continued. “She has such an amazing spirit she helped our family get through this,” said Mrs. Smith.
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