Anyone who’s had children has likely seen them suffer from eye infections now and then.But when Michelle Saaiman took a closer look at her son’s eye, she made a horrifying discovery.Thought it was a April Fool’s joke A heart-wrenching story has emerged about a little boy who’s facing the terrifying reality of losing his eye after contracting herpes in his cornea from a kiss.It’s every parent’s worst nightmare — watching their child suffer from something they never expected.Michelle Saaiman, from Namibia, noticed something unusual in her 16-month-old son, Juwan’s eye last August, initially thinking it was just an eye infection. But when antibiotic drops didn’t work and the infection worsened, a specialist confirmed the unimaginable: Juwan had contracted herpes simplex virus (HSV), likely from someone with an active cold sore kissing him around his eye,
The diagnosis left Michelle and her husband in shock.Michelle told Metro, “The doctor was telling me there’s a fever blister growing in my child’s cornea. I was literally looking at the doctor wondering whether it’s April 1, because I thought it was an April Fool’s joke.”Why his eye ”melted away” Sadly, the herpes caused so much damage to Juwan’s cornea that he became completely blind in that eye. Juwan’s eye began to “melt away” as the natural lubrication was lost, and a 4mm hole opened up. At one point, doctors feared he might lose his eye completely.“By that time, the herpes just caused so much damage that he essentially lost all feeling in the eye, and he could not see anything,” Michelle shared. “It meant the brain did not recognize the eye anymore and stopped sending signals to the eye. The gel later protecting the eye evaporated, and the eye dried out.”