When Amy Citrano first noticed a glare in the corner of her 2-year-old son Maddox’s eye last December, she had no way of knowing just how serious that glare was. She had no way of knowing that he was one out of 15,000 to 17,000 young children who develop retinoblastoma, a rare form of cancer on the eye.

Citrano said the glare looked “like glaucoma or a cataract.”

She was able to get an appointment with a doctor for Jan. 29.

3/14/08 Amy Citrano holds Maddox Citrano at home. Lee Ball/The Daily Iberian Advertisement

That’s when the doctor saw the tumor and sent her to an appointment with a surgeon, who diagnosed Maddox with retinoblastoma. They immediately contacted St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn.

That same week, Citrano, who is going through a divorce, was scheduled to move with the boys out of the house she shared with her husband, Travis.

“I felt like I was being swallowed by a black hole,” said Citrano of that week.

The day after she and her two sons, Maddox and Dominik, who are fraternal twins, moved into their new apartment, they drove the six hours to St. Jude.

Once there, Maddox’s doctors determined the tumor was beginning to break up and the best option was to remove Maddox’s eye.

To help them understand what was going to happen, the night before the surgery, nurses gave Maddox and Dominik a doll with a removable eye to play with. Citrano said Dominik made the connection, saying “Oh, he’s gonna be a pirate. Arrgh.”

The removal of Maddox’s eye — a procedure called enucleation — was performed Feb. 8. Maddox was well enough the next day to go home, although he developed pneumonia and had to go to Women’s and Children’s Hospital.

Dominik, Citrano said, “never ever looked at Maddox any differently.”

She showed Maddox his reflection in the mirror a few weeks after the surgery. When he saw himself, she said he just looked at her and said “That’s Maddox.”

Maddox will need to have checkups every six to eight weeks until he’s grown to make sure he doesn’t develop the cancer in his other eye.

He also will soon receive a prosthetic eye.

Citrano encourages parents to get their children’s eyes checked.

“You don’t think about it until it seems alarming,” she said. “It’s a rare and hard cancer to detect.

“I feel blessed because he’s cured; he’s cancer-free.”