A mum has revealed how photos of her son revealed a 'deadly secret' after the white glow in his eye turned out to be cancer.
Chloe Ross, 22, from Birmingham first noticed something was different with her son Cayson-Jay Palethorpe's eye when he was two.
You can watch a video below:
The mum noticed that it appeared cloudy and had a squint, but she put it down to a 'lazy eye'.
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"His eye was pretty glazy, looked very cloudy and wasn't as bright compared to the other one," Chloe explained.
"And there wasn't much reaction to that eye, it didn't move with the other one, there was a bit of a delay.
"I put it down to him having a lazy eye. I mentioned my concerns to a health visitor and she did a referral for a hearing and eye test and the only thing I heard from was the hearing test, not the eye test.
"I thought maybe he might need glasses or an eye patch to straighten the eye or something, I never thought it would be something as serious as it was."
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After Googling symptoms, Chloe came across 'retinoblastoma' - a rare type of eye cancer that commonly affects young children - and decided to seek medical advice.
Little Cayson was sadly diagnosed with stage E retinoblastoma with doctors rendering the little one's eye as 'unsaveable' due to the large tumour.
The tot had his eye removed before having a prosthetic fitted, and the family were over the moon last week when they were given the news that he won't need any further treatment.
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"They said that his eye was unsaveable and the worst possible outcome was that he had to have an enucleation [eye removal]," the mum explained.
"I just couldn't stop crying. I felt guilty. I was told by the hospital that he should have had checks when he was one years old for this kind of stuff, and there was no checks done.
"The surgeon and consultant both said that they believe he might need chemo because of how large the tumour was, the surgeon said it was one of the largest they've seen in a long time. In his notes it said that the tumour was 'extra large'."
Following the ordeal, Chloe is now urging others to be vigilant about any changes in their children's eyes.
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"Those pictures hid a secret that could be deadly if it wasn't caught in time," the mum said.
"When I was looking online they said that they have a glow in their eye when you take pictures with flash and I looked back at quite a few pictures because I was thinking 'I'm sure he had that glow in his eye'.
"I've gone back and there's pictures of him as young as eight-months-old that I can find with this glow in his eye.
"The whole iris had a glow and it was a goldy, silvery kind of colour when I took a picture with the flash. So he's had it for so long and I had no clue whatsoever.
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"If I didn't Google it when I did, I would have waited for the eye assessment and we could have been in a lot worse case scenario than we are now."
Chloe says that while Cayson still needs to have some check ups, he's 'technically received the all clear now'.
"He'll still have to have check ups all the time for the other eye and for his prosthetic eye to be removed and replaced as he's growing," she said.
"That simple operation has essentially saved his life and made him 10 times better. He's happy and is learning a lot more because he's not in pain and we can start moving forward.
"He's back to his happy and cheeky self now. He's brilliant and is now thriving. If you do see a glow in their eye, they're squinting a lot, have cloudy eyes or just generally always look like their in pain but can't tell you that they're in pain or always complaining of a headache.
"Those kind of things should be checked because they could be signs of retinoblastoma."
You can find more information on retinoblastoma here.
Featured Image Credit: Kennedy News and Media