A simple EYE it is not.

Hey everyone.

My name is Courtney and I go by mom.

Savannah is my firstborn daughter. She is now an energetic, moody teenager who spends most of her time teaching herself to knit and flipping through pages reading about colleges and career options, as those things are right around the corner.

Savannah was 10 months old when she was diagnosed with cancer.

What began as what we thought was a simple eye exam for a lazy eye resulted in an entire day-long event filled with many tests, several doctors, a few tears, and one very tired baby.

We left the office with more questions than answers, only to return a couple of days later.

On our next trip, Savannah was medicated up and knocked out for a long day of CAT scans and MRIs.

She was so small and so medicated, it was like a heavy bag of deadweight handed back to me, wrapped and saddled like a newborn baby.

The sweet moment was short-lived, as the doctor began using words like 'tumor' and 'cancer' .... 'chemo' followed by 'radiation' and 'enucleation'.

Savannah, myself, and an entire heaping helping of family members returned to the hospital once again for the big day.

The ultimate outcome was that Savannah had her entire eyeball removed.

Her eye was housing a tumor that had taken up 80% of the given space. There was zero chance of saving her vision, so from my point of view, there was zero reason to chance her life or her health by keeping the eye.

Over the next couple of years, Savannah was seen every month for a full EUA (exam under anesthesia).

The number of times she was put to sleep in total, between EUAs and treatments and tests, easily amounts to close to 100.

In her first couple of years of life, we spent a good amount of time simply fighting for that life.

Tumors were fought on her remaining eye before she was ultimately declared cancer-free on October 11, 2012.

Now, I'm sure you're wondering where the dilemma lies to warrant a GoFundMe page.

As Savannah has grown, so too has her eye.

In the next couple months Savannah is scheduled to undergo and entire obital reconstructioin surgery, which will result in the need for a new prosthetic to fit her new eye socket.

She has had a prosthetic eye since her first birthday, but now as an almost full-grown female, her original prosthetic needs to be replaced.

While this is a surgery that our insurance covers at absolutely no cost to us, the prosthetic needed after to give her the look of normalcy is not.

Our insurance will cover a replacement, but sadly the only ocularist within a 600-mile radius of us has stopped accepting our insurance.

We will need to pay for her new eye completely out of pocket, and as everyone is feeling it, 2025 is tight.

Any amount you feel you could give will be of great appreciation to her family, as well as a young lady who is just starting out in the world.

Our ultimate goal is $4500, as a prosthetic runs between $2500 - $5000, depending on size, color, and many factors.

I want to thank any and every person who is able to donate.