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Hi, I am Jay Lytle I am a second year student
here at the College of Optometry
this room that you are sitting in is where I spend most of my waking hours
normally I sit right about where Dr. Toole is right now
and I appreciate the invitation to be able to speak
I feel that I am the perfect reason
why InfantSee is so important
I have a prosthetic right eye
and the reason
I have a prosthetic right eye is because I had retinoblastoma as a child
like it was mentioned several times retinoblastoma is a cancer
that is one of the most common eye cancers among children
when I was two years old
the person that first notice my retinoblastoma was not a pediatrician
my mother took me to all of my well baby exams but my pediatrician never found it
it wasn't a health care professional it was my father
who saw a white reflex on my pupil that's one of the most comon signs of retinoblastoma
and they took me to Children's Hospital here in Columbus Ohio
and within the next week they had me in for surgery
back in 1990 when I was diagnosed, the standard of care then
was you remove the eye
because the first priority was to save the life of the child
so they removed my eye and I never had a problem since
my parents were told a lot of misinformation when I was diagnosed
they said he'd never be able to
play sports
he'd have trouble in school, he'd have trouble reading
trouble driving but none of those things
ever took place in my life
my parents, they just decided that they weren't
going to mention any of those things to me, when I said I wanted to go play sports, they said go for it
go play some sports
I was a wide receiver in middle school
captain of many intermural basketball teams
played left field for my church softball team
was the lead off batter
I never had a problem in school, never had a problem driving
I enjoy reading, so
I've never been limited, I'm so thankful for that, I've never had a complication
after that diagnosis of retinoblastoma
but I would have been a great candidate for an InfantSee eye exam
because most retinoblastomas
are present at or nearly after birth
is very likely
that I had my
cancer for two years
before it was diagnosed
and like I said, I went to all my well baby exams
but a pediatrician
they will tell you, they don't claim to do infant eye exams
when you take your baby to the pediatrician, they do several eye screening tests
for common disorders
but the only way
to have a complete comprehesive eye exam is to take your children to an eye care professional like an optometrist
if I were to have an InfantSee eye exam at nine months old
they might have detected my tumor over a year earlier
in nineteen ninety, it probably wouldn't have made a difference I probably would have still lost my eye if they had detected at 9 months
but here in two thousand and twelve
that can be a big difference if you detect a retinoblastoma at nine months
verses you detect it at
two years old
because we do have advanced treatments
now the treatment of retinoblastoma
they try very hard to save the child's eye because we do have advanced cancer treatments
so InfantSee is a great program because it can detect life threatening
disorders, it could save a child's eye but I think the benefit
of this program
it stretches beyond that child
on that day
with that InfantSee exam
because
like it was mentioned, most InfantSee exams, the result this is going to come back is that your child is
completely healthy, I don't find any problems
but what it does, it exposes people to the
profession of optometry
people who might not be familiar with their local eye care professionsal
so when that infant
becomes a first grader
and they have trouble in school because they just can't see the chalk board
the optometrist is there to help them
when that infant
because a teenager and has a fairly bad
red eye case, they can go to their local optometrist
and find the care that they need when that teenager becomes a college student
they have trouble reading text books for a standard period of time, and sometimes they get headaches because of it
there vision goes
or their vision goes blurry, it's their optometrist that's there to help them
and when you get into your forties and your arms just aren't long enough to read the newspaper
it's the optometrist that solves that problem
and when you get older
maybe you have
or follow-up from a glaucomma procedure
it's the local optometrist
that will be there
every step of the way to help them
so I would say that this program is worth while
for you to be a supporter of
because
you could find a retinoblastoma
it could save a child's life
it could make it so that they don't have to have
a prosthetic eye
but more than that this
program
makes people aware of
their local eye care professional that's willing to help throughout their life
for all of their eye and vision needs
thank you