The concerns about the girl turned out to be justified: retinal cancer in both eyes. She was only five weeks old at the time. The right eye was already so severely affected that it had to be removed immediately. After that, both eyes underwent radiation therapy. At that time, they didn\u2019t yet administer chemotherapy to babies. Maartje explains: \u201cMy parents slept in the attic at my mother\u2019s sister\u2019s husband\u2019s house in Utrecht, because there weren\u2019t any facilities like the Ronald McDonald House yet.\u201d After the radiation treatment, Maartje was declared cancer-free. She can see well with her remaining eye. <\/p>\n
When Maartje and her husband decided they wanted to have a child, they decided to go to the hospital to explore their options. After all, Maartje knew she had a family history of the disease and that there was a 50 percent chance she would pass retinoblastoma on to her future children. Maartje: \u201cIt turned out there were all kinds of possibilities. You can find out all sorts of things in advance or even prevent your child from developing retinoblastoma. In the end, we opted for\u2014as they so beautifully put it in England\u2014the \u2018bliss of ignorance.\u2019 We\u2019d just have to see when the time came. On the one hand, because of all the risks associated with prenatal testing. On the other hand, because you still have no certainty about the severity of the situation. In any case, retinoblastoma would not be a reason for us to terminate a pregnancy.\u201d When Maartje found out she was pregnant, she was advised to give birth at 38 weeks so the baby could be examined early. Her daughter Roosmarijn (now 12 years old) was born, and exactly one week after the birth, they were at the VUmc. During that examination, they received bad news. Maartje looks back on that period: \u201cI hadn\u2019t sensed this at all. I remember thinking, \u2018Shit, this is worse than I expected.\u2019 My parents\u2014who were still in the waiting room\u2014were called in, and when I saw my father, I broke down.\u201d Chemotherapy began just a few days later. In total, Roosmarijn\u2019s treatment lasted one year and two months. She underwent chemotherapy; both eyes were treated with laser surgery and cryotherapy; she received 25 radiation treatments at the hospital in Essen, Germany; and she wore a radioactive shield for 24 hours. She was able to save both eyes. Roosmarijn can see well with her left eye; with her right, she can only perceive light. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhat has helped me is humor and a level-headed attitude. My father used to say, \u2018Come here, I\u2019ll clean your eye so you can see through it again.\u2019 \u201cMy mom still sometimes puts a glass of something to drink in front of me on the right. Often I don\u2019t see it and knock it over. Jokingly, I\u2019ll say, \u2018Don\u2019t attack from the right, okay?\u2019 Because of all the hospital visits and the fact that we always had to be flexible, we now make new friends easily. We quickly feel at home wherever we go. We\u2019ve been able to turn my illness and Roosmarijn\u2019s into resilience. I think that\u2019s the most beautiful quality you can take away from a situation like this.\u201d \u201cI\u2019ve never been bullied. But people do stare. When I was younger and walking through the supermarket with my dad, there was a man who kept walking two aisles behind us just to look at me. We ended up doing the same thing back at him, just for fun. I used to always think, \u2018You can ask me anything and get an honest answer.\u2019 These days, I feel that people don\u2019t need to know everything. I was relieved that Roosmarijn doesn\u2019t have those deep-set eyes like I do. She\u2019s incredibly smart and a joy to look at, and she often gets compliments on her long eyelashes. There was a time when she suddenly started getting bullied because her mother looked different. That really puts you in your place. Fortunately, she handles it well.\u201d Maartje ends with a beautiful message: \u201cI believe that what you put into life is what you get back. So it\u2019s better to put out a lot of positivity. That\u2019s what we teach our daughter, too: You don\u2019t have to change yourself to make someone else happy. Just be yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Maartje (38 years old) had just been born when her mother noticed something unusual about her eye. After neither the family doctor nor the well-child clinic raised any concerns, her father took a photo of Maartje to the hospital where he worked. A resident who was familiar with retinoblastoma said it would be wise for them to take Maartje to the hospital in Utrecht. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":6424,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_daextauttol_enable_tooltips":""},"library_cat":[123],"class_list":["post-6423","library_pt","type-library_pt","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","library_cat-retinoblastoma"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ver-ooginoog.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/library_pt\/6423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ver-ooginoog.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/library_pt"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ver-ooginoog.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/library_pt"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ver-ooginoog.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ver-ooginoog.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"library_cat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ver-ooginoog.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/library_cat?post=6423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}