75 Nuggets Daily Destroyed Eyes

A fifteen-year-old boy presented to the emergency room with something strange happening to his eyes. The problem had begun subtly, creeping into his life about two months prior.

He would wake up in the morning, the world shrouded in an unusual darkness, sunlight still streaming through his bedroom window, but unable to break the gloom.

As the day wore on, his sight would gradually return, a slow dawn within his own perception.

But as evening approached, the shadows lengthened and reclaimed his vision, plunging him back into a dim, uncertain world.

It was a confusing and frightening cycle he couldn't explain or control.

His concerned parents, Matt and his wife, promptly scheduled an appointment with an eye doctor.

They watched anxiously as their son underwent a battery of tests, bright lights, puffing air, and the steady gaze of specialized equipment.

The doctor examined every part of his eye, the cornea at the front, retina at the back.

Yet by every objective measure, everything appeared perfectly normal.

To understand what was happening to MN, one had to look back years earlier to a seemingly innocent moment in his toddlerhood.

His father, Matt, offered him a dinosaur-shaped chicken nugget.

For MN, it was love at first bite.

That single food item became the cornerstone of his entire diet, dominating his life for the next seven years.

He would consume at least 75 of them every single day.

His diet was astonishingly limited.

Chicken nuggets were his foundation, specifically the dinosaur-shaped ones from a particular brand, at least 75 a day.

He allowed a few items: gummy candies, cheap chocolate bars, and a specific juice drink that contained only 3% juice.

The juice had to be in the same style of container.

Any change, and he refused it.

He refused multivitamins and rejected almost everything else.

This extreme food selectivity is known as avoidant restrictive food intake disorder, or ARFID.

His body was receiving a narrow range of nutrients.

Nuggets give protein and fat, but lack essential vitamins and minerals.

The candies and juice added only empty calories.

Matt and his wife were not oblivious to their son's problematic diet.

They tried countless times.

They were deeply worried and had tried countless strategies.

One evening, Matt decided to make a stand and prepared a balanced, home-cooked meal.

Vegetables, lean protein, and whole grains.

He stared with disgust and shoved the plate off the table.

A tantrum erupted.

He screamed, cried, and raged until his parents gave in.

Exhausted and defeated, they cleaned up and returned the familiar bag of dinosaur chicken Nuggets.

They took out the familiar bag, and the storm subsided.

MN calmed as soon as the Nuggets appeared.

For his parents, it was a soul-crushing defeat.

A cycle of conflict and concession followed for years.

After years, a sense of weary resignation set in.

Once he learned to heat them himself, they let him do whatever he wanted.

Their surrender enabled the nutritional deficits to compound year after year.

The first signs that MN's vision loss was more than a morning anomaly appeared in his routines.

An avid gamer, he spent hours immersed in virtual worlds.

But one day, his parents noticed something odd.

He wasn't looking at the screen.

He stared blankly at the wall beside his monitor.

He was using peripheral vision, eccentric viewing, to compensate for a blind center.

On his phone, he stared at his hands instead of the screen, searching for an angle where he could see.

Eccentric viewing is a classic sign of central vision loss, where patients look off-center to use a healthier retina.

The blind center expanded, consuming more of his sight.

He misjudged distances, tripped, and walked into walls hard enough to knock him down.

His world was shrinking.

He looked isolated and frightened.

One sunny morning, he woke up and his world remained completely dark.

He screamed and cried.

Terror washed over him and his parents.

They rushed him to the emergency room, praying for a miracle.

Upon arrival at the emergency room, the medical team began A thorough exam.

On the surface, he appeared relatively healthy, vitals stable, no fever, no swelling, no bruises, and reflexes intact.

He was not cognitively impaired.

The only glaring problem was the blindness itself.

A standard blood test revealed 1 minor abnormality.

His blood took a little longer than usual to clot.

This pointed to possible vitamin K issues or other causes not immediately life-threatening.

They ordered an MRI to look for structural causes like a tumor or swelling.

The MRI was almost entirely normal.

No mass, no stroke, no obvious damage.

The only hint was a subtle suggestion that something might be happening to the optic nerves.

Doctors considered all possibilities.

Given he was born prematurely, they considered delayed hypoxic injury, but the onset at 15 without prior signs made it unlikely.

They considered autoimmune optic neuritis, but that tends to be rapid and inflamed.

Unlike his slow months-long decline, they've ruled out toxins like lead or methanol.

His exam lacked accompanying symptoms, and his blood chemistry.

Showed no acidosis.

With genetic, tumor, infection, and obvious toxins unlikely, the team kept narrowing the list.

To understand MN's blindness, it's essential to know how vision works.

Light enters the cornea, passes through the lens, and focuses onto the retina.

The retina contains photoreceptors, rods, and cones, which convert light into electrical signals.

Those signals travel along the optic nerve to the brain's visual cortex.

A problem anywhere along the path can cause impairment.

Anan's vision wasn't blurry.

It was dark.

That suggested either blocked light or failure of the retinal optic nerve.

Doctors shone a light into his eyes and saw it reach the retina.

So the problem was deeper.

It could be retinopathy or an optic neuropathy.

The MRI hinted at the optic nerve.

This pointed to optic neuropathy, a grave finding because optic nerve damage can be permanent.

CNS nerve cells have very limited regeneration. Optic nerves were being destroyed one fiber at a time.

Doctors needed to identify the cause urgently before recovery became impossible.

The slightly abnormal blood clotting test was the key that unlocked the case.

It shifted thinking from toxins to what essential nutrients he had not consumed.

Vitamin K is essential for clotting.

A deficiency could explain the prolonged clotting time.

This realization changed their approach.

Instead of hunting for poison, they considered which nutrients were missing.

The parents described 7 years of nearly exclusive chicken Nuggets, candy, and sugary juice.

No multivitamins.

Examination of nutrition facts showed key vitamins and minerals were absent.

They considered B12, copper, zinc, but the most likely culprit was vitamin A.

Vitamin A is critical to the chemical cycle in the retina that allows photoreceptors to convert light into electrical signals.

Without it, that cycle breaks down and retinal structures fail.

The diagnosis?

Nutritional optic neuropathy, a direct consequence of his severe long-term dietary restrictions.

Daily consumption of chicken nuggets had starved his eyes of the building blocks they needed to function.

Treatment was straightforward.

Give the nutrients he lacked.

He was given vitamins A, B1, B6, B12, C, K, copper, and zinc.

Over time, his nutrient levels returned to normal on blood tests.

But the psychological barriers to a varied diet remained.

Micronutrient deficiency is rare here, not for lack of food, but because variety is available and sometimes refused.

After discharge, his parents confirmed he was more open to trying different foods.

At follow-up, vitamin and micronutrient levels remained normal.

But would his vision return?

Sadly, no.

The damage had been severe and advanced.

Nerve fibers had atrophied.

He was deemed legally blind and registered for disability services.

His life was permanently altered by a condition that was, in theory, preventable.

His story is an extreme lesson on the importance of a balanced diet.

Food is more than fuel.

It provides essential components to build, maintain, and repair our bodies.

A varied diet supports bones, nerves, and healing.

Fortunately, his experience spurred change.

He began trying new foods.

He adapted to his new reality with family support.

Medically, he was nutritionally stable, but his vision did not return.

This extreme case reminds us to pay attention to nutrition and mental health around food.

Take care of yourself and be well.