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by Nicole Ireland
TORONTO — Eight-year-old Logan Dorna is cheering on the Blue Jays in their playoff run while sporting their logo on his prosthetic eye.
Logan’s left eye was removed at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto after he was diagnosed with retinoblastoma — an eye cancer — when he was six months old.
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Matthew Milne, an ocularist who works with the hospital’s eye cancer team, made Logan’s first artificial eye as a baby and replaces it with a new one about every two years as he grows up.
When Logan came to see Milne a couple of weeks ago for his next prosthetic eye, he had something specific in mind.
“I wanted to get the special eye because I like playing baseball and I like watching it too,” he said in a video interview with his parents from their home in Richmond Hill, Ont., on Friday.
A custom-made Blue Jays prosthetic eye for eight-year-old Logan Dorna is shown in this undated handout. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Handout – The Dorna Family)
Milne, who hand-paints the artificial eyes, made Logan one with a gold iris and baseball seams.
He painted the Blue Jays logo on top of the eye. Unlike the gold and the seams, it’s not possible to make the logo visible to others because the top is tucked back into the eye socket.
But Logan knows it’s there and can show others when he swaps that eye out for a second “everyday” prosthetic eye. That one has a brown iris to match his seeing eye.
It also has a special painting on the top that reflects his interests: a character from the “Zelda” video game series.
Milne encourages his young patients to pick fun images for the tops of their prosthetic eyes.
“When you’re dealing with a very kind of adult issue like retinoblastoma, I want to always give kids the opportunity to kind of customize something for themselves, make it fun for them,” he said.
Logan’s mom, Taline Dorna, said her son has been wearing his Blue Jays eye “every time the Jays have been playing because he believes in his soul that it’s giving them a little bit of extra luck.”
The sports theme is also a celebration of how much Logan overcame in the summer when he started playing baseball for the very first time, she said.
“Having just monocular vision, depth perception is really off. So whenever he hit that ball … (it) really gave him that boost of confidence.”
When he’s not batting — Logan’s favourite part of the game — he’s “usually right field but sometimes middle and left,” he said.
Dorna and Logan’s father, Serge, hope that their son’s embracing of his artificial eye inspires other children with differences to feel proud and be welcomed.
“That’s what we’ve always wanted for him … no social stigma attached to having a prosthetic eye because it is such a visible difference,” Dorna said.
“We want him to always feel confident and not ashamed of who he is because it’s part of his identity.”
Logan’s prosthetic eye is connected to ocular muscles so it can move in sync with his seeing eye when he’s looking around, even though there’s no vision there, Milne said.
Retinoblastoma is rare — there were 15 cases in children 14 years and under in 2019 — but it’s the most common type of eye cancer in children and often found under the age of two, according to the Canadian Cancer Society’s website.
Removing the cancerous eye helps prevent the tumour from spreading elsewhere. After Logan’s eye was taken out, he didn’t need any further treatment such as chemotherapy or radiation, his mother said.
He now goes for checkups at SickKids’ eye clinic once a year and sees Milne every few months to maintain his prosthetic eye.
The Blue Jays are off today after falling 6-2 in Game 5 of the American League Championship Series on Friday night against Seattle.
The best-of-seven series heads back to Toronto on Sunday, with the Mariners ahead 3-2. If the Blue Jays win that game, Game 7 will be Monday in Toronto.
The winner of the series will face the Los Angeles Dodgers, who swept Milwaukee Friday in the National League Championship Series, in the World Series.
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