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FB: Evaristo Estrada
Hello, I’m Evaristo Estrada. I am 28 years old and originally from Lincoln, Nebraska. I currently live In Rio Rancho, New Mexico with my wonderful girlfriend, Andrea who is always by my side. I have a wonderful mother and 3 amazing sisters. I love to model and I play a lot of sports for fun.
My eye story starts in Lincoln, Nebraska when I was 10 months old. My mother described seeing my eyes as having “cat-eye
reflexes”. This caused my eyes to tear up and develop a lot of discharge.
I was in so much pain that I started hitting my head against the wall. My mother took me to five eye specialists who all concluded that it was just a regular eye infection.
Sensing that this was a misdiagnosis, my mother sought the help of a retinal specialist in Omaha, Nebraska. This specialist was from India and specialized in eye cancer.
He took one look at me and immediately diagnosed me with Bilateral Retinoblastoma Cancer in both my eyes. I was rushed to emergency surgery in an effort to save both my eyes using Cryotherapy.
Unfortunately, cancer in my left eye was so far advanced that they couldn’t save it, and it had to be removed. It was looking like both eyes would have to be removed, but thankfully they were able to save my right eye.
I am so glad they were able to save one eye! While of course, I want to thank the medical team and my retinal specialist for saving my eye and ridding me of cancer, the one who truly saved my life and deserves the most thanks is my mother. She never gave up on me or stopped pressing for answers. She is the real MVP. I’m so blessed to be alive and well.
Bullying was the hardest thing that Ive had to deal with growing up. I was called mean names like Cyclops and one-eye freak. It hurt a lot being called those names, but the best thing I did was learn to ignore them. As I got older the bullying stopped and it no longer has been an issue.
The hardest thing I’ve dealt with physically is being born with only one eye from such a young age! I would say that it has made driving a little difficult because of the blind spots (you can get special mirrors to see the blind spots though so that helps a lot haha).
The best advice I can give someone that is dealing with an eye impairment is to be confident in yourself and never bring yourself down. You are a warrior!
Ocularist: Donald Kluge
Eye surgeon: David chacko
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