Amelia May

In each city, we are riding in honor of local kids with cancer. Here is the story of Amelia, a little girl in Nashville whose mother, Yvonne, just contacted me last week. We've been emailing back and forth, and we are hoping to get together soon so that Tom and I can meet Amelia. Yvonne was nice enough to share their story with us:

Amelia was diagnosed with Retinoblastoma, a cancer of the eye, in June of 2005 at the age of 3 1/2. What we first thought was pink eye or "allergy" eyes was actually glaucoma and redness from the pressure of the tumor growing in her eye. By the time we knew she had cancer, it had already taken the sight in her eye and the only was to keep it from spreading was to enucleate [remove] her affected eye. Her other eye remains healthy, and her cancer did not move so far that she needed chemotherapy, which was a huge blessing. She will need close and continuous follow ups for many years to keep her healthy and protect the vision in her healthy eye. Amelia will always need to wear glasses, too, to protect her healthy eye- they are purple which is very groovy. She knows she has "her Amelia eye, a Princess [prosthetic] eye, and Princess glasses" - because she is just like a princess when she wears them! At this writing, she loves Care Bears, Ponies, Veggie Tales, Thomas the Tank Engine, computers, going to the zoo, and sandwiches of any kind as long as they are cut into triangles.

~Austin