16th May, United Kingdom – School catering assistant Rebecca Lolly, 29, would have never fathomed that a commodity as simple as a £3 worth toothbrush could potentially help in saving her daughter’s life. Katie Lolly, aged 2, was detected with rare eye tumour, Retinoblastoma, while she was brushing her teeth with a Tesco tooth brush which had a flashing light on it. The light, when reflected on her eye, alerted her mom to view an abnormal white reflection in Katie’s eye, as reported by The Sun.
As quoted in The Sun, medics will now perform an emergency operation to remove the eye. Apparently, this diagnosis was just on time to save Katie’s life. Retinoblastoma is a rare, rapidly developing tumour which generally affects children under the age of six, and can treble in size in just ten days. Devastated by this unfortunate news, Rebecca and her husband Karl, are however, relieved that they were able to save their daughter’s life, just in time.
"If it wasn’t for that flashing toothbrush, we may never have seen the tumour – at least, not till it was too late,” her mother was quoted saying.
Providing further details on this incident, she was quoted in The Sun saying, “We bought the brush because Katie liked the look of it. It has a bear on it called Billy, and when you press the button on the front, the light flashes for 60 seconds – which is how long kids need to brush for.”
"When we got it home, we turned the bathroom lights out so Katie could try it. She loved it but, when I looked at her face in the dark, I could see the lights creating a strange white reflection in one eye. At that point, we decided to take her straight to the hospital."
Termed as a rapidly developing cancer, Retinoblastoma develops in the cells of the retina. By and large, it affects the children under the age of six and has the tendency of multiplying three times in size just in a span of ten days. According to MacMillan Cancer Support website, each year, around 40 such cases are diagnosed in the U.K alone. The first symptoms of the Retinoblastoma could be that white area of the pupil stops reflecting the light. Often, this can be observed while taking a photograph of the child, when using a flash, wherein the affected eye might look white in the photo, appearing like a cat’s eye.