A Mother’s Warning: How a Simple Photo Uncovered Her Son’s Eye Cancer and the Need for Awareness. An

Kara Sefo, 43, thought something was wrong with her son, Rocky’s, eyes, when he was around four-and-a-half months old.

Kara told Fabulous Digital: “He’s our second child, so we’re doing tummy time and things like that, and 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.”

Hectic family life meant Rocky saw the doctors around two months later, and Kara says: “Sadly, our GP wasn’t concerned at all, so our appointment for the ophthalmologist wasn’t rushed, and Rocky was seen a month later.

“My gut was like go and ring and pretend it’s urgent. We just got bogged down with life.”

The mum-of-two, from Newcastle, Australia, realised something was seriously wrong, as following the ophthalmologist appointment she was told a team would be waiting to see Rocky at a specialist hospital – two hours away – the very next day.

Kara, who lives with her husband Rony, 50, a former athlete, and daughter Giselle, five-and-a-half, recalled: “Our heads were spinning at that appointment, where we were told he had eye cancer in both eyes and would start six months of chemo the following week.

“Our darling boy Rocky was diagnosed with the genetic form of Retinoblastoma at seven-and-a-half months old.”

The NHS defines Retinoblastoma as a “rare type of eye cancer that can affect young children, usually under the age of five”.

Kara said: “He had 90 per cent vision in the right eye, and only 10 per cent in the left eye.

“We didn’t realise he was actually blind in his left eye. I just burst into tears. 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 tumour called a trilateral tumour.

“So on the day of diagnosis they were like he’s got cancer, he’s got the genetic form and we need to send him for an MRI to see if he has a brain tumour. If he has a brain tumour you will lose him. I thought oh my god.

“While he’s being diagnosed I started to feel sick, he went in for his MRI and I’m thinking my baby has got this inoperable trilateral brain tumour.

“I got sicker and sicker thinking it was anxiety. I got rushed in to see a doctor, and had to have my appendix out the next morning. It was a big couple of days.”

Kara, a former event sales manager, said after diagnosis Rocky then started a gruelling six months of chemo.

She said: “We would do chemo the first week, the second week he would be in hospital with a virus for two days. The third week he’d start to feel good, then we’d start chemo again.”

Six rounds of chemo managed to stop the growth in the right eye, but it kept returning in the left eye, so Rocky underwent a year of cyrotherapy and laser treatment, soon after stopping chemo.

She said: “The right eye, the good eye, has never played up since chemo. What the chemo did was it calcified the tumours, so the tumours are still there but they’re just volcanic rocks.

“But the left eye must have had, roots, because it kept popping up. They kept zapping it with cryotherapy and laser.”

Initially Kara told doctors to remove the left eye, saying: “When we were told to have chemo, I said I want the eye removed.

“They said to me, he’s got it in both eyes, if we remove one eye, and the other eye swells up, what are we going to do? Remove both eyes?

“But if we had removed his eye 18-months-ago, we wouldn’t be in this position right now.”

After finishing laser and cryotherapy, Rocky had three months of specialist chemo treatment last September, and was scheduled for more chemo this January, where it would be administered directly into his artery.

But before he could be treated, Rocky’s left eye declined rapidly.

Kara said: “Within the week the cancer had just advanced so much, and it had detached itself in the eye.

“They said it had advanced so fast, they were worried it was going to jump out of the eye. If it jumps out then you’re in trouble.

“They said, listen we need to remove this. We had it removed, then coronavirus hit.

Rocky had his left eye taken out six weeks ago, and Kara recalled: “When he had his eye removed that was horrendous, that night.”

But Rocky, who is still too young to fully grasp what’s happening, has made a good recovery and is being measured for a glass eye, and Kara said Giselle was tested and showed no signs of the disease.

Kara said: “We removed it. We made peace with it. He’s going to rock a glass eye, I’m not worried about that.”

Rocky faces another six rounds of chemo as there is a chance cancer cells could have been transported to another part of his body, with Kara pushing to delay it for three months due to coronavirus.

As the family gear up for more treatment, Kara shared a photo showing a simple test parents can do to spot the disease.

She added: “If we’d gone at four months old, maybe it wouldn’t have had those three months to grow. We would have caught it then and we wouldn’t be here.”

Kara urged other mums to do a simple test with their kids using the flash of a camera.

She took two snaps of the tot, one with the flash on and the other with the flash off, showing a red spot in Rocky’s left eye – a clear sign of retinoblastoma.

Uploading the snap to Facebook, she said: “The below photos were taken an hour before Rocky’s eye was removed. One photo is with the FLASH ON and one is with the FLASH OFF.

“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.

“Either way it will be unusual. I’m not intending to freak anyone out, especially those with young babies, but I can’t stress how early detection is key.

“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.

“I’m not a doctor and not saying that this is the only way to check, you still need to be proactive asking medical professionals to regularly check eyes, but this test is simple and easy.”

Despite losing his left eye, Kara says Rocky is just like any toddler.

She added: “He is the happiest boy who is tearing up our house like a normal two year old.”

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While this mum revealed her son, three, is dying of cancer & living his final days in lockdown and says to think of kids like him when you’re sunbathing.