A woman from Arizona found out that her baby boy had no eyeballs hidden beneath his eyelids.
Three months ago, Kelly Lopez gave birth to his son Richie. Everything was normal during the pregnancy, but the condition that Baby Richie suffers from cannot be detected by a simple ultrasound. Days after giving birth, Lopez was worried about the fact that her baby would not open his eyes, but the nurses suggested that the baby’s face was still swollen.
On the 13th day after being born, Lopez decided to have her baby examined under an MRI. The test results shocked Lopez and her family. Speaking with 3TV, she said: “The first thought through your mind is, how did this even happen and how was it not even caught?”
Baby born without eyes to family in Mesa, @JaredDillingham reports http://t.co/wcJatpxoqT pic.twitter.com/J0tR50sRf9
— AZ Family (@azfamily) January 24, 2015
Richie suffers from a rare condition called Anophthalmia. The disease affects 1 out of 250,000 people and is exhibited by the total absence of the eye tissue. However, there is still hope for Little Richie. Doctors noted the presence of an optic nerve. The right technology can give the baby a chance to see in the future. “I do hope that one day they’ll be able to either grow an eye or transplant an eye,” Lopez said.
For now, the doctors prepared Richie by giving him expanders which would help the eye sockets grow as he prepares for prosthetics. The prosthetics can help, but Richie is finding ways to rub them out of his eyes. Richie’s mom found one after the baby rubbed it off. She had to call the surgeon at 2 in the morning just to re-insert it. “It was so emotional, but I knew I had to do it,” Lopez said. “I knew that he needed this and I had no other choice; we were going to get it back in,” The other one was lost and the family thinks that the dog ate it.