May 11, 2015
An Illinois mom is sharing her heroic account of detecting her toddler’s rare eye cancer in hopes of helping others in a similar situation.
"I had this dreaded feeling in the pit of my stomach and I took the picture and boom. His whole pupil was just white and that's when I knew," Fitzgerald told WREX.
Julie Fitzgerald, a 31-year-old mom of three, told CNN affiliate WREX she had a feeling something was wrong with her son’s eye, and through an Internet search she found medical sources citing a white glow in photographs as a possible sign of trouble.
She then snapped a cellphone photo of her son and immediately saw the signature white glow, which with further medical testing turned out to be a rare form of cancer, known as retinoblastoma, which left 75 percent of the boy’s eye covered in tumors.
"I had this dreaded feeling in the pit of my stomach and I took the picture and boom. His whole pupil was just white and that's when I knew," Fitzgerald told WREX.
A specialist later told Fitzgerald had she not followed her instinct and done the research, the cancer would have likely spread to her child’s brain and blood.
The boy will eventually have to get a prosthetic eye and may need chemotherapy; though doctors told the family they are hopeful the cancer can be successfully removed.
Read the full WREX article here.
