Jeff Stevenson was training to be a federal law enforcement officer. A couple months into the program, during a simulation exercise, a paintball hit his face shield just above his left eye. He felt pressure and a slight stinging sensation, nothing more.

The next morning, his eye was red. He wondered if he had pink eye. At the medical unit, he was told that it wasn’t pink eye, but they didn’t know what it was. Neither did an optometrist in town, who sent him to a corneal specialist in Albuquerque — a five-hour drive. By now, Stevenson’s eye had begun to hurt.

That specialist wasn’t sure what was going on either, but he advised Stevenson to go to the Wilmer Eye Institute, where he had done his fellowship training.

“It’s the best place in the world to go for eye care,” the doctor told him.

Stevenson’s eye still hurt, but even more worrisome, he had begun to lose vision in it. At Wilmer, a sonogram revealed that his eye was bleeding inside from the impact of the paintball, which would explain why it was difficult for him to see. But it also revealed something far more ominous: a large mass.

Stevenson vividly remembers the doctor saying that the sonogram showed a tumor on the retina. “As a 23-year-old kid, I was like, people get tumors under their skin all the time. I’d had a buddy from college who had a little tumor on his forearm, and they just went in and removed it, like a mole,” he says. “I wasn’t thinking cancer.”

But the characteristics of the tumor suggested it was cancer. At Johns Hopkins, James Handa, M.D., the Robert Bond Welch, M.D., Professor of Ophthalmology and chief of the Retina Division at Wilmer, sent Stevenson for a chest X-ray and bloodwork. The next day, he called Stevenson’s home. “I was a young guy right out of college,” Stevenson says. “I was living with my parents, and the doctor called my mom and said, ‘Your son has cancer. We’re not sure what’s going on, but he has a tumor in his eye and his blood counts are way off. We recommend that you consult with an oncologist.’”

A work-up revealed that Stevenson had stage 4 testicular cancer that had spread to his eye and lungs. The good news was that testicular cancer can usually be treated successfully. “If you’re going to have cancer, that’s the one to have,” the oncologist told him.

Three days after receiving a diagnosis of cancer, Stevenson underwent surgery to have the testicle removed. That was on a Thursday. The following Saturday, he walked across the stage for his college’s annual commencement ceremony (he had graduated several months earlier). On Monday, he began chemotherapy.

He ultimately underwent several rounds of chemotherapy, spending six hours a day, five days a month at the hospital each round. He also had weekly appointments with Handa. In consultation with Stevenson’s oncologist, Handa was monitoring the size of the eye tumor; if the chemotherapy didn’t work, they would implant a radioactive disc to kill the tumor. Fortunately, that turned out to be unnecessary.

The chemotherapy shrank all the tumors, including those in his lungs.

Previously, the focus had been on saving Stevenson’s life. Now, the Wilmer team could work on restoring vision to his eye, which he had ultimately lost as a result of bleeding from the initial injury. Handa operated, removing the accumulated blood and a pucker in the macula caused by the bleeding. Two more surgeries followed, including one to remove a developing cataract.

Today, Stevenson credits the care he received at Wilmer with having near- perfect vision. “The kindness and the attention to the patients at Wilmer is second to none,” he says. “Everyone was so wonderful and helpful. I feel like I couldn’t have gotten better care.”

Stevenson completed his training and is now a federal law enforcement officer. He has since married, and he and his wife have a baby girl. He thinks back on that time and shakes his head. “I was scared because of what was going on with my eye, but then to be told you have cancer....”

Handa says that Stevenson and his family showed tremendous courage during a very challenging time. “Taking care of him has been easy and a joy. I am so glad that he is thriving,” says Handa.

After Stevenson recovered, his younger brother was diagnosed with early-stage testicular cancer — early, because of his awareness of his brother’s ordeal. “When he felt a lump, he was like, ‘Hey, that’s what my brother went through,’” says Stevenson. “He went and got checked out and thankfully, he didn’t have to go through all the stuff I did.”