Ryan Parris isn’t letting an eye-eating parasitic amoeba stop him from playing with Alabama.
As Joseph Goodman of AL.com reports, Parris has had an unlikely journey to playing with the Crimson Tide. Parris, a walk-on football player with no scholarship, participated in Saturday’s A-Day game, despite having an amoeba in his left eye which is blinding him. Here’s how Goodman describes the disease.
“For those unfamiliar with amoebae, science calls them single-celled animals that catch food and “move about by extending finger-like projections or protoplasm.” They live in damp warm places, or in your eyes.
In other words, Ryan has the mother of all eye floaters. But this one is eating his eye.”
Parris redshirted as the backup long snapper last year and was hoping to continue as the backup long snapper this year. Parris’ eye irritation began in November, and he had to carry a cooler full of medicine with him at all times just so he could have eye drops when needed.
As Goodman reports, it was just last Monday when Parris’ vision deteriorated because of the amoeba, leaving him legally blind. When his dad took him to the doctor, he couldn’t read anything off the eye chart.
“But that’s not it,” Butch Parris said. “So, after he couldn’t read any of the chart, the technician put her hand up in front of his face about two feet.”
His dad told Goodman they “bombed his eye with medicine,” which improved Parris’ vision and likely saved his football career.
Parris is an inspiration for continuing to play football despite the overwhelming obstacle. I can’t imagine how difficult it would be to manage an eye-eating parasite and trying to play football at the same time. Parris is one tough dude.
[AL.com]
