Strollerderby

Red eye? Nope, eye cancer

Posted by Brett Singer

A woman in the UK saw something strange in this photo; turns out it was eye cancerYou know those people you've befriended online? Never met them, but you trade baby pictures? It's all just a little casual thing, right? A way to connect with people who are experiencing the same things that you are.

For one woman, that seemingly casual connection actually saved her baby's life.

Megan Santos of Riverview, Fla. and Madeleine Robb, of London, were online buddies. They gave birth the same day and swapped photos of their bundles of joy. The U.K. mom noticed something odd about one of little Rowan Santos' eyes.

It wasn’t easy for Madeleine Robb to send an e-mail to another mom warning that her baby might have a deadly form of eye cancer. But she’s glad she did it — and so is the mother of 1-year-old Rowan Santos.

Just hours after reading the e-mail, Megan Santos of Riverview, Fla., learned from a doctor that Rowan has a potentially deadly form of childhood cancer called retinoblastoma.


WOW.

(For what it's worth, "retinoblastoma" isn't on my spell-check.)

Here's a video report from the Today Show:



source: NBC

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+ DIGG + STUMBLE

Comments

 

BBBGMOM said:

I find this fascinating, too.  It happened to the son of a friend of mine.  She's a nurse and was startled by the printed photos, aware of the abnormality.  She took her boy to a specialist where he was diagnosed with retinoblastoma.  He's now eight years old, has a prosthetic eye and is doing great.

September 2, 2008 3:12 PM
 

Mom2Two said:

My mom's neighbor's son had retinoblastoma.  He's a high school junior now with a prostethic eye, doing great.  But as a teenage babysitter, it was super weird to see him show me his collection of outgrown eyes.

Also, my mom has left TWO comments on this site today and neither have yet to show up.  What's up with that?

September 2, 2008 10:48 PM
 

Racelh said:

My niece had retinoblastoma as a baby. They thought it was just lazy eye and made an appointment at Toronto Sick Kids (they live in Toronto). However, being worrisome people, they didn't want to wait the 3-4 months for the appointment and went to the US and paid a doctor to look at her. The doctor sat them down and told them their baby had cancer and that her eye would have to be removed. Next thing they knew, she was having the operation. This is so scary and I remember them looking back at pictures of her as a baby and one of her eyes were white like that. They never knew she was blind in that eye the whole time and that her eye was essentially a tumor. Luckily, all the cancer was removed and none had gotten into her brain, which was a real possibility since she was in stage 4 of 5 of the cancer. She's 5 now and is so beautiful. People should know though, that this is extremely rare.

September 6, 2008 3:20 PM

About Brett Singer

Brett Singer is a writer and father living in Manhattan with his wonderful wife and two terrific sons (referred to here as Thing 1 and Thing 2). He writes about music for the Boston Phoenix, parenting for Babble and daddytips.com, and other topics for anyone else who will have him.

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