An eight-year-old girl who had to have her eye removed due to cancer is proudly showing the pink sparkly ‘superhero’ prosthetic replacement.
When Daisy Passfield, of Abbots Langley, Hertfordshire, was 14 months old in October 2015, doctors found a grade D tumor in her retina.
Retinoblastoma, a rare and aggressive form of eye cancer that usually affects babies and young children, mainly under the age of five.
The most common symptoms are a quint and a white glow in the eye or pupil in dim lighting or when a photo is taken using a flash.
Daisy’s mum, Alysia, said that she first noticed there was something wrong while looking at a picture of her.
“I noticed from a photograph – she had a white glow in her eye and her eye had a glaze on it,” she said.
When Daisy Passfield, of Abbots Langley, Hertfordshire, was 14 months old in October 2015, doctors found a grade D tumor in her retina.
“Daisy was absolutely fine, she took it in her stride, and she has six rounds of chemotherapy to try to shrink the tumour.”
But after two months of treatment, the youngster relapsed, resulting in her having her right eye removed in a four-hour operation at the age of just two-years-old.
The tot had her right eye removed in a four-hour operation when she was age two after a newer procedure which is meant to shrink the tumour, broke the tumour into different parts and the family didn’t want it to spread.
Daisy was given a general anaesthetic for the treatment, which involved passing a catheter through the femoral artery, all the way up until it is in the ophthalmic artery.
Once the catheter is in place the chemotherapy drug is administered via the tube and is able to work directly on the tumour/tumours in the eye.
However the tumour broke into different parts and the family did not want it to spread – which is why they opted for her eye to be removed completely.
She had a blue prosthetic eye for years, but this summer she decided to get a pink sparkling prosthetic eye since she likes glittery things. The self-assured schoolgirl shocked her family and doctors by asking to have a replacement eye made in her favorite color, pink glitter, rather than keeping with a matching blue lens.
Now she’s proud to show off her “superhero” eye which pals say looks befitting of a unicorn or a dragon – much to Daisy’s delight.
“I feel happy because everyone can see my pink sparkly eye,” Daisy said. “I am so excited to show everyone at school my sparkly eye.
“I think they will love it just like I do. Everyone I have spoken to has said how lovely it is. I have been told it looks like a superhero eye, a dragon’s eye and a unicorn eye and I like all those things.”
Childhood Eye Cancer Trust says 50 cases are diagnosed a year in the UK – or one child a week.
It represents 3 percent of all childhood cancers and 10 per cent of cancers in babies under the age of one in the UK.
