Headline Of The Week Weak
Filed under: Baby Blabber > Headline of the Week
"Woman saves baby's life - by email!
U.K. mom spots baby’s eye cancer online
Woman saw tumor that doctors missed: ‘Anybody would have done it’"
Amazing! CLICK HERE to read the article accompanying this headline.
Woman spots baby’s eye cancer online
U.K. mom saw tumor that doctors missed: ‘Anybody would have done it’
It wasn’t easy for Madeleine Robb to send an e-mail to another mom warning that her baby might have a deadly form of eye cancer. But she’s glad she did it — and so is the mother of 1-year-old Rowan Santos.
“I didn’t want to scare her,” Robb told TODAY co-host Meredith Vieira from London on Thursday. “But then I weighed out the options. If something wasn’t wrong, then no real harm was done. If something was wrong, I really had no option, so obviously I had to tell her.”
Just hours after reading the e-mail, Megan Santos of Riverview, Fla., learned from a doctor that Rowan has a potentially deadly form of childhood cancer called retinoblastoma.
Although Rowan will, unfortunately, lose her left eye, Megan Santos has called Robb, who hails from England, a “hero,” because the online diagnosis may have saved her baby’s life.
The two moms, who each gave birth to a daughter on the same day, spoke for the first time on the phone on Wednesday. But it was a newer form of communication, the Internet, that provided the vital information and the lifesaving link.
Crucial correspondence
Santos and Robb first met online through chat on a pregnancy Web site, BabyFit.com, when they were both expecting. Their respective daughters, Rowan Santos and Lileth Robb, were born on the same day last August, spurring a continuing friendship through regular e-mails and photo-sharing.
When Santos posted a photo of 1-year-old Rowan on the Web site, her friend across the Atlantic noticed a white shadow in the baby’s left eye.
Robb, a 32-year-old business analyst with no medical training, found the image curious, so she did some research on the Web. She learned that the white area could be a symptom of an eye cancer called retinoblastoma.
Though it was the first time she’d ever seen the symptom, Robb explained, “I’d seen a news article here in the U.K a few years ago, something similar, and it just sparked a memory of that. Also, the word ‘cancer’ sprang to mind with the same memory. So obviously I was quite concerned and just decided to do more research.”
From her home in Stretford, England, Robb sent a concerned e-mail to Santos. Immediately, Santos made an appointment with Rowan's doctor. The next day, Aug. 8, she was referred to an ophthalmologist. A series of tests revealed Rowan did have a cancerous tumor growing on her retina.
Rowan will lose the eye sometime this winter, and there are rounds of chemotherapy ahead. But Santos has nothing but gratitude for the e-mail warning she believes saved her daughter’s life.
“Grateful cannot even begin to describe how we feel toward Maddie,” Santos told the U.K.’s Daily Mail. “Do I consider Madeleine our hero? Most certainly. If she hadn't sent that e-mail, Rowan's prognosis wouldn't be as good as it is.”
But Robb was self-effacing about the “hero” moniker. “I suppose if that’s how they feel, then that’s what I am to them,” she told Vieira. “I think anybody in my situation would have done the same thing, if they had known what I knew and had the opportunity to say it.
“I suppose I’m a hero in a certain sense, but in another sense, I think I’m rather normal and I care about people.”
Disease and treatment
Retinoblastoma is a cancer of the retina that can affect one or both eyes. If not caught in time, it can spread. The disease can start in the womb, but can affect children up to age 5.
“It’s a rare tumor,” NBC chief medical editor Dr. Nancy Snyderman told Vieira following the interview with Robb. “It usually happens in infancy or early childhood, and doctors precisely look in a baby’s eye with that light looking for a certain kind of reflection. When that reflection is abnormal, it raises the risk of whether this type of tumor is there.
“That white reflection you see in the baby’s eye is sometimes picked up just on routine photography — in this case, a Web picture. But what you hope is that doctors will see it internally before it gets to this stage.”
Santos said she and her husband, David, had noted a slight change in Rowan’s eye color. But the white shadow only showed up in a flash photo, and the cancer was not detected when Rowan had a routine checkup at 9 months.
Why not? “Sometimes doctors miss things,” Snyderman explained. “Sometimes it’s there, but it’s so faint, it really appears later. It’s hard to put blame. Somehow it was missed. With our increasing number of premature babies, there are other problems that could also sort of look like it.
“So it is a reminder for parents to ask doctors, when you go for the baby checkup, is everything OK?” Snyderman continued. “If something looks like this in a picture or your baby’s eyes aren’t moving together or one eye is bigger than another, just pick up the phone and say, ‘Something’s not right.’ ”
Fast treatment is vital with retinoblastoma. According to Retinoblastoma International, a nonprofit that provides information about the disease and raises funds to research it, 87 percent of children stricken with the disease worldwide, mostly in developing countries, die.
“In a case like this, you have to go to your local medical center and see a pediatrician who specializes in just this kind of problem,” Snyderman said. “This is not the kind of treatment that is done in a local hospital. This is where you search out the specialist.”
wow thats amazing
thats along article to keep saying the same things.
Ok, that article was too long. How about a quick summary? I'm not trying to read a book on here.
awww that baby is sooo cute!!
Re: Andy27 – I stopped half way… i got the point! lol
Good
there's the healthcare industry for ya….
Re: Andy27 –
oh I dont read…Im just an anorexic fag…I just look at the pretty pictures and comment right Letty??
Gross.
technology these days… its amazing i tell ya
wow i never even heard of retinoblastoma. she is very lucky that someone noticed something was wrong with her child before it spread.
thank god for caring people. i hope that baby will be ok through chemo
howd they miss it?, it looks obv in a pic like tht!
wow! That is awsome they caught it in time. What a beautiful little girl!
Too long! I only read the first 3 paragraphs..
Re: abercorey – Ewww, don't acknowledge that loser-freak. That's precisely what "it" wants…ATTENTION. To be recognized. That's why I don't even address "it" or its many other identities. We're above that, Corey. It's like those pretty girls in high school who didn't even know that the fat girls existed. You gotta make these losers INVISIBLE. Nothing shatters their empty worlds more than being ignored.
thats amazing
Gotta love the internets and the google!
THAT IS AMAZING, KINDRED SPIRITS!!!!
cute little baby!! how could the doctor miss that?!
OMG–I had a similar thing happen to me! I was working at this one strip club a few years back, and one of the patrons, who was studying to become a doctor, noticed this funny mole on my inner thigh while I was…oh wait, that's a scene from a Chuck Palahniuk book. Never mind.
Re: abercorey – THANKS ABERCOREY, YOU SAVED SENDING MY COMMENT TO ANDY27! KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK!!!
awesome.
How wonderful, hopefully my babies don't have eye cancer because my fiance wont let me post pics of them online since he is a police officer in our small town
Re: Andy27 – HA ATTENTOIN, THIS COMING FROM THE QUEEN ATTENTION WHORE HIMSELF! HAHAHAHA!
Re: Andy27 – hey…do you have a life? Your ugly mug pops up on the reply to just about every thing I have looked at here at PH.com for last few weeks. What kind of job do you have? How is it you are online 24/7.
You should be embarrassed. Plus your heartless reply to this touching post shows what a complete ASS you are.
Thank goodness for the internets. Check out pukingdog.com for more nutty news…
Re: Andy27 –
Gawd Regina…I was just poking fun at her….you know how you make tiny references to the loser girl with braces and a fat ass just to make her feel acknowledged and then the next day she thinks your best friends and tries to talk to you and you just ignore her….well thats what I was doing!!!
The details are what make the story compelling! Don't blame anyone else of you don't have a good attention span to read an article, that took about 45 seconds to read. LOL .people are so lazy!! This was a moving story, and proof that the people in our lives can be guardian angels.
wow. that is amazing.
Oh man I work in a call center and I spoke to this one man whoe's grand son dyed from this cancer and he gave me a website address cause his wife now does awareness stuff for it. lovejoey.com
Re: Andy27 – I think you just described yourself!
I think abercorey and andy27 are the same person. In fact I am positive they are!
Re: kgbmommalove –
hello Lorraine from Mad TV…..please don't look at or talk to my Andy in the future as doing so will just further justify the fact that your an idiot if you call someone a loser for allegedly posting on every story where in doing so you would have to be looking at every post to notice….
Thanks Lorraine from Mad TV…
Re: kgbmommalove – yeah pretty much, fill your brain with gossip, and could careless about human lives. Babies included i guess. selfish. Someone read this and tell me what happened. Oh well. He obviously has alot of people paying attention to him instead of the article, which is probably a goal.
funny how people who don't like Andy27 are commenting on him ALL the time.
Re: kgbmommalove – THANK YOU! ALL JOKES ASIDE HIM AND ABERCOREY ARE THE TWO MOST DISGUSTING PEOPLE ON HERE AND THEY THINK THEY'RE FUNNY!
Thank god for the mother's sharp eye! Hope all ends well!
That's pretty amazing. Gives a whole new meaning to the term "internet friends"
omg, poor baby
DUH! like the different colored eye didn't clue anyone off to begin with…geez, people are all diagnosticians these days!
god bless that lady.
and andy27.. ur a little bitch.
Re: Boo – I THINK IT ONLY SHOWED UP IN THE PICTURE THAT'S WHY. IT'S PROBABLY NOT AS VISIBLE TO THE NAKED EYE.
how did the baby's parent's NOT notice? even if you can only see it in a picture, it's really obvious..
A miracle!!!
Please remove this cycloptic infant-asshole from your site - this baby is nauseous-making!
My cousin Adam Campfield was born with retinoblastoma and had one of his eyes removed before he was even one. He was told he had a 1 in a million chance of it coming back in the other eye, but sure enough it did. He lost his vision around the age of 6. Then, around 14, the cancer returned under his knee and he had to get a Total Knee Replacement. Then, at the end of 2007, the cancer returned again. He has been undergoing chemo along with stem cell harvesting and transplants. Adam is only 20 years old, yet has endured much more than most people can even imagine. I pray for Rowan.
But the left eye is clearly different from the right one! How can his mother nor the doctors noticed it? stupids!
Re: Daisha loves Perez – I AM SORRY TO HEAR THAT.