Doctors misdiagnosed baby’s cancer as eczema, she lost an eye

A 6-month-old girl’s rare retinal cancer was mistakenly diagnosed by doctors as eczema — and her eye was eventually removed.

Katherine O’Neill, 42, noticed her daughter, Amelia, had been rubbing her left eye since she was born in September 2020.

“I was first advised by the health visitor to put breast milk on it,” O’Neill told South West News Service. “She had passed her newborn sight check, and I was advised the redness could be eczema.”

Amelia is a twin and was born prematurely, so she had numerous medical appointments, where O’Neill kept mentioning her eye-rubbing habit.

During her 12-week check-up, one health professional even suggested the redness could be a birthmark.

But when the UK tot was 6 months old, in March 2021, her grandmother noticed that her eye looked unusual while she was sitting in her highchair at dinner.

“I hadn’t noticed anything about the actual eye before, but under the spotlights in the kitchen, you could see that it was protruding and looked kind of dead,” O’Neill said.

The next morning, O’Neill called the doctor, who saw Amelia that same day.

“The GP examined the eye and shined a light into it,” O’Neill recalled. “She quickly told me that it could either be a cataract, or a very rare cancer called retinoblastoma, but she thought it was the latter.”

Amelia was soon diagnosed with retinoblastoma, a cancer that forms inside the tissues of the retina, per the National Cancer Institute. A Grade E tumor was found in her left eye.

Richard Ashton, chief executive of the Childhood Eye Cancer Trust, told SWNS that one baby or child is diagnosed with retinoblastoma each week in the UK.

The condition can be hard to diagnose, he added.

O’Neill admitted that she was “devastated” by her daughter’s diagnosis and had a hard time telling her family.

Amelia underwent six rounds of chemotherapy between March and August 2021.

“I slept in the bed next to her. She was hooked up with wires, and it was awful to watch,” O’Neill told SWNS.

“The next morning, she looked very pale, and as soon as she woke up, she vomited,” the mom described. “It made her very sleepy and sick.”

The tumor shrunk, but the cancer eventually began to grow again, which meant Amelia needed four chemotherapy injections in her eye.

At that point, O’Neill made the decision to have her daughter’s left eye removed entirely — and now, the little girl’s doing “fantastic.”

“We realized that her eye didn’t look like her eye anymore, and she couldn’t see out of it. At least if she had a prosthetic eye, the cancer would be removed,” she reasoned.

Amelia’s left eye was removed in December 2021, and she is now thriving with a prosthetic eye.

Her mom describes her as a “superstar” who loves to watch “Peppa Pig,” make new friends, spend time with her grandmother, go to the park and help in the kitchen.