33-Year-Old Mom’s Regular Eye Checkup Due to Poor Vision Leads to Cancer

A 33-year-old mother has worn glasses since age three and would go for regular eye checkups, but at her most recent appointment with the doctor in January, she was shocked when her optometrist detected a shadow on her left eye, which turned out to be a tumor.

The patient named Karly, a report from The Sun said, was referred to Bristol Eye Hospital, where she was diagnosed with ocular melanoma.

This typically impacts the eyeball and develops from pigment-generating cells known as "melanocytes," as described in the Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Medicine.

Based in Somerset, the patient is now encouraging people to undergo routine eye examinations as they help identify the early indications of cancer.

During that routine test, Karly was offered an Optical Coherence Tomography scan. She said, she was offered the extra health eye check "and went with it."

ALSO READ: 5 Tips To Keep Your Eyes Healthy

(Photo: Pexels/Jan Krnc)
Ocular melanoma is ‘an extremely rare form of cancer’ that impacts the eye with five for every million adults.

Different Eye Examinations Conducted

The patient explained how she underwent many different eye examinations before being sent for a CT scan as experts believed she had ocular melanoma, also called eye cancer.

At this point, the mother said she was unaware of the condition. She also said then, her doctor began to talk about radiotherapy, and when he said "radiotherapy," she thought it was cancer.

Karly was referred to Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust in February and began radiotherapy. She needed to stay at the hospital for three days for her radioactive plaque treatment.

During the procedure, a small metal disc was placed onto her eyeball's surface over her tumor, which provides radioactive energy, with most of it directed inwards toward the tumor.

'Clueless'

At first, she said, her diagnosis did not click. The effect of it has not hit her until now she cannot see, now, "it's more upsetting for me" as she cannot see anything, she added.

She elaborated that her vision is so blurry now that she cannot see out of her eye.  Karly added that all she sees is all black if she looks to the left. It all depends on how her body responds to radiotherapy, she continued.

Every day is a different story for this mother of four, it might be fuzzy, or she might have double vision. Now, she said, she never really knows what she will wake up to. She's also hoping that someday, she will wake up and her vision is quite good enough to see clearly.

This patient, who still "comes to terms" with her damaged vision, said her eye is presently sore and red and that she wouldn't know until a couple of months how much vision she had lost.

Ocular Melanoma

The National Organization for Rare Disorders describes ocular melanoma as "an extremely rare form of cancer" that impacts the eye with an occurrence of five for every million adults.

Even though rare, it is the most common primary cancer of the eye among adults. Primary means that specific cancer started at the site, in this case, the eye, and did not spread there from another body part. In most people, this cancer typically occurs in a part of the eye called "the uveal tract.

Related information about ocular melanoma is shown on Mayo Clinic's YouTube video below:

RELATED ARTICLE: Tom Chang MD's Tips For Eye Health During The Pandemic

Check out more news and information on Eye Health in Science Times.