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A young mother was heartbroken to discover that her son’s unusual eye symptoms were signs of a potentially fatal diagnosis.

Chloe Ross, 22, believed that her son, Cayson-Jay Palethorpe, now 3, had simply developed a lazy eye when it seemed less responsive than his other eye.

But she soon grew concerned when he began to complain of pain and headaches, while his eye became red, inflamed and seemingly lost its sparkle.

His increasingly unusual symptoms led the mom to believe he had “retinoblastoma,” a rare type of eye cancer that can affect young children, usually under the age of 5.

“His eye was pretty glazy, looked very cloudy and wasn’t as bright compared to the other one. And there wasn’t much reaction to that eye, it didn’t move with the other one, there was a bit of a delay,” Ross told Kennedy News.

Initially, Cayson’s doctors didn’t find cause for worry.

“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,” she said.

“I thought maybe he might need glasses or an eye patch to straighten the eye or something,” she added. “I never thought it would be something as serious as it was.”

Last spring, Cayson’s nursery called his mother to pick him up, under the impression that his eye was possibly infected. Ross immediately tried to get a hold of a doctor but claimed she never heard back.

After about a month, she noticed his eye was deteriorating and began searching the internet to find a diagnosis that matched his symptoms. That was when she first learned of retinoblastoma, which led her dig up old photos of her son from infancy in search of a telltale glow in his eye that could only be seen in images taken with flash.

“The whole iris had a glow and it was a goldy, silvery kind of color when I took a picture with the flash,” she explained. “So, he’s had it for so long and I had no clue whatsoever.”

She took Cayson to a doctor the very next day, at which point he was referred to Birmingham Children’s Hospital in the United Kingdom.

Doctors there discovered that the young boy’s left retina was no longer attached to the surrounding tissue, leaving him completely blind in that eye — another sign of retinoblastoma.

Ross brought Cayson back to the hospital in late June, when he was officially diagnosed with the rare form of cancer.

“They said that his eye was unsaveable and the worst possible outcome was that he had to have an enucleation [eye removal],” Ross recalled.

“I was kind of expecting it,” she continued. “I just worked myself up that that’s what it was going to be that when I heard the words, it just made my heart sink. I just couldn’t stop crying. I felt guilty.”

The medical professionals at the hospital told Ross that her little boy might need to undergo chemotherapy due to the size of the tumor, noting that it was one of the largest they’d seen in a long time.

“In his notes it said that the tumor was ‘extra large,'” Ross said.

The pressure in Cayson’s eye continued to increase during doctors’ examinations, and he was kept in the hospital for a week for further observation in the lead-up to his operation. Fortunately, an MRI scan last month showed his tumor had not grown significantly during that time, which meant that his surgery could go forward as planned.

The distraught mother has said that parents should be aware that the odd glow could be a sign of serious disease, so they have a chance to catch it sooner than she did.

“Those pictures hid a secret that could be deadly if it wasn’t caught in time,” she said. “We could have been in a lot worse case scenario than we are now.”

Although the diagnosis was terrifying, Ross is thankful that she took the initiative to research her son’s symptoms on the web, and bring him to a doctor when she did.

“He’s technically received the all clear now,” she told Kennedy News. The young boy will still have to have consistent checkups for his other eye to be sure the cancer did not spread and to have his prosthetic eye replaced as he grows.

And, luckily, he’ll be able to avoid chemotherapy for now.

“I was crying. I was over the moon that he didn’t need to go through any more suffering than he already has,” Ross said. “That simple operation has essentially saved his life and made him ten times better.”

The young mother was glad to report that Cayson is “happy and is learning a lot more because he’s not in pain.”

Now, she added, “We can start moving forward.”