Glaucoma is normally a disease impacting older people, so when it appears in a child it's many times misdiagnosed. Erin Billups has more in today's health and medicine report.

It was Megan Charles' sister that realized something wasn't right.

"My elder daughter said to me mommy, Megan not happy, she's not smiling like she was smiling before, she's not playing," says Sebrina Cardoza, Megan's mother.

Cardoza thought her three-month-old was just suffering from allergies. Her eyes were frequently watery, she was sensitive to the light.

But three specialists later she discovered Megan had a condition effecting just one in 8,000 babies - pediatric glaucoma.

"I wasn't aware of it because I'm not thinking of a young baby having glaucoma in the eyes," says Cardoza.

Glaucoma is damage to the optic nerves. It normally occurs within a child's first year, when the drainage canal hasn't developed properly, trapping fluid in the eye, causing it to expand and bulge.

"If the eyes grows too big, too fast they'll develop a lot of troubles with developing good vision in the eye. They develop astigmatism from the breaks in the cornea and they become very, very nearsighted, because the eyes are so long. And if the eyes are asymmetric the brain doesn't learn how to use both eyes together," says Dr. Joe Panarelli, Ophthalmologist, NY Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai.

It's not a condition pediatricians normally check for and there are few ophthalmologists who feel comfortable doing the corrective surgery on infants.

But if done right it's completely reversible. Cardoza found the help Megan needed at the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary.

"Most of the resistance is at the inner wall, so if we can clear those channels up, we can cure the disease.  It's one of the few times, where as a glaucoma specialist we can actually fix the problem definitively," says Panarelli.

Adults with glaucoma often experience irreversible damage, even blindness.

Megan had surgery on both her eyes before the damage got too bad.

"I thank God that I caught it before it was too late," says Cardoza.

Cardoza hopes to get the word out to other parents- not to ignore odd symptoms.

Because she sought help Megan is finally taking it all in with completely healthy eyes.

"She looks around, nothing don't bother the eyes no more, no sunlight, no glaze from the light, and she's a happy baby," says Cardoza.