TORONTO – Eight-year-old Logan Dorna is cheering on the Blue Jays of their playoff run while sporting their logo on his prosthetic eye.
Logan’s left eye was removed on the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto after he was diagnosed with retinoblastoma — a watch cancer — when he was six months old.
Matthew Milne, an ocularist who works with the hospital’s eye cancer team, made Logan’s first artificial eye as a baby and replaces it with a brand new one about every two years as he grows up.
When Logan got here to see Milne a few weeks ago for his next prosthetic eye, he had something specific in mind.
“I desired to get the special eye because I like playing baseball and I like watching it too,” he said in a video interview together with his parents from their home in Richmond Hill, Ont., on Friday.
Milne, who hand-paints the bogus eyes, made Logan one with a gold iris and baseball seams.
He painted the Blue Jays logo on top of the attention. Unlike the gold and the seams, it’s impossible to make the emblem visible to others since the top is tucked back into the attention socket.
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But Logan knows it’s there and might show others when he swaps that eye out for a second “on a regular basis” prosthetic eye. That one has a brown iris to match his seeing eye.
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It also has a special painting on the highest that reflects his interests: a personality from the “Zelda” video game series.
Milne encourages his young patients to select fun images for the tops of their prosthetic eyes.
“While you’re coping with a really sort of adult issue like retinoblastoma, I would like to all the time give kids the chance to sort of customize something for themselves, make it fun for them,” he said.
Logan’s mom, Taline Dorna, said her son has been wearing his Blue Jays eye “each time the Jays have been playing because he believes in his soul that it’s giving them somewhat bit of additional luck.”
The sports theme can also be a celebration of how much Logan overcame in the summertime when he began playing baseball for the very first time, she said.
“Having just monocular vision, depth perception is absolutely off. So each time he hit that ball … (it) really gave him that boost of confidence.”
When he’s not batting — Logan’s favourite a part of the sport — he’s “normally right field but sometimes middle and left,” he said.
Dorna and Logan’s father, Serge, hope that their son’s embracing of his artificial eye inspires other children with differences to feel proud and be welcomed.
“That’s what we’ve all the time wanted for him … no social stigma attached to having a prosthetic eye since it is such a visual difference,” Dorna said.
“We would like him to all the time feel confident and never ashamed of who he’s since it’s a part of his identity.”
Logan’s prosthetic eye is connected to ocular muscles so it might move in sync together with his seeing eye when he’s looking around, though there’s no vision there, Milne said.
Retinoblastoma is rare — there have been 15 cases in children 14 years and under in 2019 — nevertheless it’s probably the most common sort of eye cancer in children and infrequently found under the age of two, in keeping with the Canadian Cancer Society’s website.
Removing the cancerous eye helps prevent the tumour from spreading elsewhere. After Logan’s eye was taken out, he didn’t need any further treatment reminiscent of chemotherapy or radiation, his mother said.
He now goes for checkups at SickKids’ eye clinic annually and sees Milne every few months to keep up his prosthetic eye.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 18, 2025.
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