Looking back now, Tiffany Germany says bringing her young son, Turner Strickland, to the annual Retinoblastoma Kids Day 20 years ago was a relief and an education.
“It was great to see all of the face-painting and games that the kids could play. They even had a special gift for Turner,” says the Oxford, Georgia resident. “And I got to hear what the other parents were doing with their kids, how they were adjusting. There was a lot to know.”
From the moment her son was diagnosed with retinoblastoma, Tiffany wanted to know it all - the hard medical facts about the disease and the practical wisdom of the parents who had been there before her. As a mammography technologist, she was confident in her ability to ask good, probing questions. Hospital environments did not intimidate her per se.
But as a mother, she was torn apart when her son's diagnosis was confirmed.
“After the exam, Dr. Hubbard left the room for a minute and then he came back and pretty much told me Turner had a malignant tumor, that they had seen it,” she says. “I cried, I really did.”
Sadness and fear continued to swirl inside Tiffany, but she didn't miss a beat. The surgery was scheduled for about a week after the diagnosis. Meanwhile she talked to an oncologist and investigated other possible post-operative therapies. The specialists offered her lots of helpful information, but it was the children in the waiting room of a cancer clinic that tweaked her outlook.
“I saw all of these kids - none of them looked sad. They were just being kids. Playing. But I knew they were sick, fighting cancer. And that's the kind of thing that makes you think twice, you know, about life and what you’ve got to do in life. Here were all of these kids, so young and having to be strong. They were fighting for their lives.”
Fair to say, some of their resilience rubbed off on the young mother.
“We never ended up having to have any kind of treatment after surgery,” she continues. “Dr. Hubbard came out after surgery and told us we’d caught it right in time…he even showed me pictures of the tumor, where it had broken off just before reaching the optic nerve.”
Tiffany didn't stop worrying at that point, but she did gain some confidence. And that confidence became optimism as she saw her son reach the same milestones as every other kid. That included Turner's unique brand of childhood mischief.
“Like in elementary school, when I’d get calls from his teachers,” Tiffany says.
Turner smirks sheepishly.
“Oh yeah, I remsmber…”
“Yeah, I’d get calls from his teachers telling me he’d taken his [prosthetic] eye out while he was on the playground," Tiffany says. "And the teachers, well, they didn’t want to touch it. “
At this, Turner smiles, full-on, and chimes in:
“Yeah, during nap time, sometimes, I’d get bored because I didn’t want to go to sleep. So I’d take out my eye and play with it. It was just something I could do.”
Turns out there are a lot of other things Turner Strickland could do. And he did them, with the same gusto as his classmates. Baseball, soccer, golf. He tried football - didn't like it. He's even made a sport of egging on his mother:
“I was supposed to wear glasses, to protect my eyes, but sometimes I’d just wear them while she [Tiffany] was around. Then I’d put them away,” he admits.
Tiffany rolls her eyes but it's clear she's a little charmed by his pluck.
“We went through a lot of glasses because he’d lose them or sit on them and break them. You really need to wear them. But the thing is, it didn’t slow him down.”
If he’s a little uncomfortable being the center of attention, Turner Strickland is not shy about going after his dreams. Right out of high school he landed a job as cable technician, got an apartment, and bought a full-size truck that would dwarf most starter homes. He shies away from our questions about his future, but he’s confident that he has a future. And it's not going to be limited by retinoblastoma.
“The thing I would tell other kids is that it [retinoblastoma] doesn’t change you, it doesn’t mean you can’t do things,” he says. “I’ve done everything I've wanted to do.”
-Kathleen E. Moore