At the age of three, Dan was hit in the eye by a peach-pit. The controversy still rages.  Dave (dan's brother) and Bobby (dan's cousin) were hitting baby peaches in MA's backyard with baseball bats when poor little danny was hit in the left eye.  In the hospital the doctor told his mother that he was probably going to loose sight in the damaged eye. Luckily he did not, and went through life with 20/15 vision (which he still has). 43 years later in January, 2007, he noticed that "his left eye felt like it was seeing differently then the right eye." So he took a visit  to the optometrist and at first they thought it may be freckles or stress related. Then, he visited a specialist who took high quality pictures of his eyes (shown below). The doctor saw scar tissue and asked Dan if he had ever had any trauma to his left eye. So Dan told him about when he was hit in the eye with a peach-pit when he was three. Therefore, the doctor confirmed that the white blotches on the pictures below are scar tissue from when he was hit, which was resulting in the defect in his left eye.

(The pictures with white blotches on them are his left eye, the one with the scars.)

Shown below is the test that the doctor gave Dan to see what he sees. If you or I looked at this grid with only our left eye, we would not see the gray smudge at the bottom. Dan however does see the smudge, due to the scar in his eye. Even though the scar is in the upper right left hand corner of his eye, he sees it on the bottom because of the way your eyes flip things.

Written by Sarah Vivoli - 2/4/07