Spaghetti feed to benefit boy with eye injury

Talkative and articulate, 7-year-old Dawson Holverson can tell you everything that happened that terrible Monday morning.

He can tell you how he and his mom, Daureen, and brothers, Dylan, 11, and Dallas, 9, had the day off.

It was Jan. 14. That day, he came downstairs to watch a movie with his mom. Afterward, his mom said she had a couple of calls to make, then she was going to make a late breakfast.

“You know, like a brunch,” the second-grader explains.

So Dawson went upstairs.

“I was watching TV and I fell asleep. I started to wake up when I was falling out of bed and I hit my eye on the toy sheriff’s badge,” he says.

Dawson holds up the bronze-colored, metal badge that he got while visiting actor John Wayne’s birthplace in Iowa. True to the badges of the old West, it’s star-shaped.

Dawson says he then went to a bathroom mirror and pulled the star out of his right eye.

“It didn’t hurt that much,” he says, but then adds, “It started bleeding a lot.”

Daureen was downstairs when she heard her son come down screaming “Mommy, mommy, my eye!”

“I didn’t know what he’d landed on,” she says.

But she knew the situation was serious when her son pulled his hand away.

"You couldn’t tell it was an eye,” she says.

Dawson adds more detail.

“She almost fainted, because she’s not a blood person,” he says.

Daureen hurriedly took Dawson to Kid Care and Dr. Terry Wooldridge, who sent them to ophthalmologist, Dr. Steven Samuelson.

Samuelson told Dawson that he’d need a surgery.

“I was kind of scared because I thought that stitches would hurt,” says Dawson, adding he had a nightmare after the procedure.

But sometime after the surgery, Dawson says he did get a chocolate doughnut with sprinkles which he gave to his cousin, and some fruit.

In the meantime, his dad, Daniel, and Daureen were told that the metal toy had made a diagonal cut from the 10 o’clock to the 4 o’clock positions. Daureen said the family later learned the cut went from the front to the back of the eye. Dawson stayed at Fremont Area Medical Center as doctors monitored the pressure in his eye.

But Dawson quickly adds that he got to watch “SpongeBob SquarePants” and “The Suite Life of Zach and Cody” -- a couple of his favorite shows on TV.

Dawson had another surgery on Valentine’s Day in Omaha. There, a doctor removed the lens, which couldn’t be replaced because three-fourths of the zonules that held it in place were gone, Daureen says.

Then in March, the retina began to detach and doctors performed a 5 1/2-hour emergency surgery. In April, it started to detach again. That’s when he was referred to specialists in Iowa City, where his retina was re-attached via a laser procedure. Surgeons removed scar tissue and put in silicon oil to help hold the retina in place, Daureen says.

Dawson’s fifth surgery was only supposed to involve a cornea transplant, but the retina was starting to detach again.

“So they did some reconstruction of the eye, re-attached the retina, put in more silicon oil and did a cornea transplant,” says Daureen, a certified nursing assistant.

Besides the other trips, Daureen and Dawson made an emergency trip to Iowa in October when the pressure in his eye went up.

Surgeons expect that the latest cornea transplant will fail and another will be needed. A retina can only be re-attached so many times, but his doctor doesn’t think his eye is a total loss, Daureen says.

“He’ll never have 100 percent vision, hopefully he’ll get some back,” she adds.

Right now, Dawson can see light and dark when a light is shined in his eye. Other than that he can’t see out of his right eye.

But he will tell you that he can see really well out of his left eye. He also knows the importance of a benefit fundraiser planned to help his family with the multitude of expenses.

When gas prices were up, it cost $60 just to make it to Iowa and the same amount for the return trip. That doesn’t include the thousands of dollars in bills that have piled up or the costs of hotels when they’ve had to stay overnight or Daureen’s time off work. Every time Dawson has surgery, she’s off work for several weeks on family medical leave without pay. Her sick and vacation time have been used up.

What’s more, the Holversons have had to meet not one, but two insurance deductibles after her husband had to change jobs.

“We’re drowning,” Daureen says.

To assist the family, a fundraiser is planned from 4-7 p.m. Friday at Salem Lutheran Church in Fremont. The event includes a spaghetti feed, silent auction and raffle. The spaghetti dinner costs are $6 for adults and $4 for children. More than 90 businesses and individuals have made donations, which include gift baskets, certificates for free meals, a visit to a day spa, hats and shirts �” and a birdhouse that Dawson helped his dad and brothers build and paint. There is also an account set up in Dawson’s name at American National Bank in Fremont for those who’d like to contribute.

Daureen and her family have appreciated support from local residents.

“The community has been very, very good to us through this whole thing,” she says.

Dawson will need to return to Iowa on Tuesday for another checkup and on Dec. 16. And for now, he can’t run and jump and play like other children because of his eye.

“It’s really, really tough,” his mom says.

Dawson is waiting for better times. When he grows up, he wants to be a baseball player. For now, he just wants something else.

“I’m hoping that after my next surgery, I can see,” he says.