Goli 1 Ram Goli Ms. Gardner English 10H 2 24 January 2014 What Did I See?

I was upset; I was perspiring; my hands tightly clasped the stone-cold clicker. Press the button when you see a black dot appear, said the nurse. Then she flipped off the lights in the chilly evaluation room and left me, with only the menacing machine to look through. I sat in front of the device, looking through its padded eyepiece, desperately trying to locate each black dot as it appeared. A few minutes passed by, and I hardly noticed any. Anxiety crept over me. The nurse came back, along with Dr. Boyle. He tore the slip of paper that the machine spat out the back, gave it a quick once over, and reported, Well Ram, it looks like youre going to need glasses. Had all those long nights of squinting precariously at Harry Potter, or the Hardy Boys by the dim lights of my bedside lamp finally caught up with me, as my mother had warned? Ram! Its time to go to sleep. Squint any longer and your eyes will stay that way! She irritably called from the hallway. Nevertheless, I didnt want to. I wanted Fudge to finally witness the return of Voldemort, though I had already read it numerous times. But that didnt matter. I continued to read, and reread. Everything else around me might have seemed hazy, but as long as my eyes and my mind captured the story in crisp detail, I was content. Sitting in my chair, I reluctantly pulled the glasses out of my backpack, and perched them on my face. Oh, how I despised them. The cold metal felt like an ice pick driving into my brain,

Goli 2 picking its way through the nooks and crannies of my confidence. My mother always told me that shed never lie to me; everything she says, through and through, is gold. Maybe I should have listened. A few weeks after putting on glasses for the first time, my baby brother, Srihan, was born, in Santa Rosa. My dad sat next to the hospital bed while nurses wandered in and out of the room, checking on my mom who lay in the bed, scribbling down numbers on the computer next to her as the lines spiked and fell all over the black screen. I noticed the colorful swirls and spirals running down the length of the bed, looping around the back and finally interlacing at the foot. I wanted to hold my brother, who was lying next to my mom, but my dad said that I should wait a while. He was still fragile, and small, and most of all, pink. He shined with a soft pink, but the doctors only smiled when I pointed it out. As new nurses walked in and out, poking and prodding him, he constantly turned his head back and forth, taking in everything he saw. I almost wished that he would stop, for the back and forth motion of his neck began to worry me. I wondered what he was seeing. Babies cant focus their eyes very well, right? I asked one nurse. Thats right, she answered. He wont be able to focus on things more than a foot away for two or three months. And hell only see in black and white. Only when hes three months old will he be able to see all the colors. Thats odd, I thought to myself. We come into this world without color. As I pushed my glasses back up the bridge of my nose, I chuckled to myself, thinking that although I was stuck with glasses and ever-worsening vision, I could probably see better than this little guy. I reached out to stroke his soft head, and the feather-soft hairs tickled my palm.

Goli 3 By the time Srihan reached the age of five months, I could tell that he began to see things, recognize, and remember. He had heeded the nurses words. He would smile every time I walked into the room, or when the television was turned on, or when my mother held up his favorite jar of Gerber baby food. He almost always reminded me of the Mona Lisa. His eyes carefully and meticulously followed everything, tracking something until it was finally out of his sight. Experts like Nick Pisa say that in the eyes of Da Vincis 500 year-old masterpiece lies a hidden code, only visible with the aided eye (signal phrase). In Srihans eyes, I could see his uniqueness. When he was just a few months old, barely possessing the strength to lift his plump head off of his neck, my parents would set him on the ground, giving him the freedom to explore the house, instead of the inside of a caged crib. Hed look at everything, touch everything, smell everything, lick everything, and throw everything. And when something lay just outside of his reach, hed lay flat on his stomach, and roll there. Like an overzealous puppy rolling through the lush green grass, Srihan turned round and round all through the house. Midway through my third grade year, my family and I began to notice something different about Srihan. Do you see that white spot in his eye? my dad would ask. No, I dont see anything, my mom and I would respond in unison. I swear that I saw something. I received the news after returning home from school one day. Ram, we have to tell you something, my parents began. I looked at their faces; their eyes were brimmed with a tear or two, a red hue masked over where there used to be white. I heard a sniffle, and saw used tissues resting some distance away on the table.

Goli 4 Srihan has a retinoblastoma, a tumor on his retina. The doctors are going to have to use chemotherapy to remove it, and maybe even administer some laser treatment, they said. Their hands clenched down on the edges of the table, and I could tell that pain plagued their voices. I didnt understand much of what they said at first. Retinoblastoma? Tumor? Chemotherapy? Did I hear them correctly? Yet, as they sat me down at the table and carefully explained to me what they had learned that day, the realization dawned over me. Sometimes, I lost track of the time. It had already been six months? A year? How much longer? I would come home from school and sit by Srihans side, watching him stare with an empty gaze. As I found out from an online publisher, MedicineNet, I knew that the chemotherapy left him feeling exhausted, worn out, and fatigued ("Chemotherapy Drugs, Hair Loss, Side Effects, Treatment") (signal phrase). I felt so ignorant. For months, I had dreamed and wished that I could rid myself of my vision, my ruined eyes. After looking at Srihans, I wouldnt have hesitated to take his, and free him of the agony. I religiously listened to Bob Marleys Three Little Birds, telling myself that everything would indeed be all right. It took eighteen months of brute and horrifying chemotherapy before Srihans eye was finally eradicated of the tumor. At the end of it all, my entire family and I changed. We developed patience, during the long, silent sessions of treatment, in the small, lifeless hospital room overlooking the bustling streets of San Francisco; courage, when Srihans blood tests came back still positive, signifying yet another round of dreaded chemo; discipline, when the nights of restlessness, and sorrow, and frustration, made us want to rip our hair out; most of all, faith, knowing that with time, all would be well, and we would all be whole again. I had doubts along the way, but Srihans silent battling and perseverance constantly reminded that the end would be near. No matter what Dr. Boyle told

Goli 5 me, I knew my vision was clear. I could see the finish line, through all the fog that rested in my way. I guess I just have an eye for some things.

Goli 6 Works Cited

"Chemotherapy Drugs, Hair Loss, Side Effects, Treatment - MedicineNet." MedicineNet. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Jan. 2014. Da Vinci, Leonardo. Mona Lisa. 1503-1506. Oil on wood. Louvre, Paris. Marley, Bob. Three Little Birds. Exodus. Island Records Inc., 1977. MP3. Pisa, Nick. "Mona Lisa Painting 'contains Hidden Code'" The Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group, 10 Oct. 0054. Web. 17 Jan. 2014.