A 43-year-old mother has warned parents about cancer that took her son’s one eye.
Kara Sefo, from Newcastle, Australia, knew there was something wrong with her son, Rocky’s eye when he was four-and-a-half months old.
Kara told Fabulous Digital: “We’d look at his eye and I’d notice like a marble. I’d think ‘that’s weird’. And he had a bit of a lazy eye. He would crawl but bang into the left-hand side.”
She took her son to her GP but the GP saw her son a month later.
After Rocky’s appointment with the ophthalmologist, Kara was told a team would be seeing Rocky at a specialist hospital the following day.
The next day, Kara and her husband Rony were told Rocky had eye cancer in both eyes and he would be starting six months of chemo the next week.
Kara, who also has a five-year-old daughter Giselle, said the family was left shocked and heartbroken.
Rocky was diagnosed with the genetic form of Retinoblastoma when he was seven-and-a-half months old.
He was blind in his left eye as he had only 10 percent vision in his left eye but had 90 percent vision in the right eye.
Kara said: “The cancer was right in line of the retina, so he couldn’t see. Alongside retinoblastoma is if it jumps onto the optic nerve, which is joined to the middle of the brain, it can cause a brain tumor called a trilateral tumor.”
After six rounds of chemo, the growth stopped in the right eye but it kept returning in the left eye so Rocky underwent a year of cryotherapy and laser treatment.
He went on to have three months of specialist chemo treatment and finally had his left eye removed six weeks ago and will be fitted a glass eye.
Kara said: “We removed it. We made peace with it. He’s going to rock a glass eye, I’m not worried about that.”
Kara is now warning parents about cancer that took her son’s one eye and telling them how to spot the disease.
She urged parents to take a picture of their child using the flash of a camera. When she did, she noticed a red spot in Rocky’s left eye.
She shared the picture on Facebook to warn parents as she wrote: “If you put your flash on (especially when not needed) an eye with a tumour will show either a white spot or a reflective type colour.”
“I’m writing this post to ask everyone and anyone, everywhere to share this post to EVERYONE. My reason for asking this, is to bring awareness to this terrible cancer and to show you how a simple test can be done at home.”
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