Shelby Simkins and Ryan Denham both 26 were all happy until they noticed something terrifying in a photo of their child.
Dela-Rose was a cheerful baby and her parents never missed a chance to capture their kid’s beautiful smile in their camera.
But one day Dela’s mom photographed the baby after feeding her and noticed the child who was born with a squint has more of it. She consulted to doctor and it resulted in Dela being diagnosed with cancer.
The infant was just five months old when she started a course of treatment and doctors had to remove her eye. Fortunately, Dela is now cancer free and has turned one year old but her parents issued a warning to aware other parents about the sign that made them catch their baby’s cancer.
Shelby, from Dover, said: ‘’I’d taken the photo after seeing Dela lying facing me on my knees looking at me. She’d just had her milk and it was all over her face, so I wanted a picture for the memory.’’
“I took it on my phone and didn’t realize the flash was on, but you could see her right eye was red, while the left one had this white glow in it.’’
“I thought at first it was just the flash and the funny angle I’d taken the picture at, but I was also concerned at the time about her squint and had been reading up about it. I read that the optic nerve does not develop until later in babies so thought it could have been that.’’
Doctors suggested her to take Dela to the optician after her mother told them about the baby’s squint eye. The optician recommended her to take the infant to an ophthalmologist, or eye surgeon, at Margate’s Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother Hospital, and Dela had more tests at Dover’s Buckland Hospital.
Dela then was diagnosed with retinoblastoma, cancer of the retina caused by a faulty gene and mostly found in young children. Shelby recalled her first appointment in Margate saying, “The ophthalmologist was asking Dela to follow toys around and using a light in her left eye. Her eye was not fixing on anything and she didn’t like the light being shone in it.’’
“But it was when I mentioned the flash photograph, with the white glow in her left eye, that the ophthalmologist looked worried.’’
“The lovely consultant was going through everything that needed to happen, but we just felt numb. There were a lot of tears that day. Even though I thought I’d prepared myself for the worst news, I hadn’t. We just sat outside the hospital in total shock.”
After a week, under general anaesthetic, surgeons checked the tumor and realized it was too big and the chances of saving Dela’s eye were less. Shelby explained. “We were given the option of removing her left eye or chemotherapy and cryotherapy treatment, which would have been so much to put her through and would not have saved her vision.’’
“We knew we had to go ahead with having her eye removed to stop the spread of the cancer. We wanted it gone. It was such a big and hard decision to make but we knew it was for the best.’’
“We know she will not know any different and Dela was so good throughout it all. It didn’t faze her, except for when she went into theatre and had to have a mask put on her face. The staff were also amazing, they were so good with her throughout the process.”
The operation ended in two-hours on October 30, 2019, doctors had removed Dela’s left eye and an artificial eye was fixed at its place. After returning to home on the same day, it took a week to swell to go down.
Dela was fitted with a molded eye at London’s Moorfields Eye Hospital in February which has the same color as her right eye.
“But it looks so good that if you didn’t know she had had cancer, you would not be able to tell it was an artificial eye. When our family saw her afterwards they could not believe how amazing it looked.’’
“We have to take it out once a week to clean it with soap and water, then pop it back in, which she doesn’t particularly like, but she is getting used to it.”
Dela still goes for checkups every four months and the proud parents were glad they were able to celebrate their tot’s birthday at home. “We couldn’t really do much because of Covid-19, but I made her a little cake and decorated the house. We celebrated just the three of us,” Shelby added.
“Both sets of grandparents were so upset they could not be there in person, but they dropped gifts off at the door and we were able to FaceTime friends and family.
“It was very emotional thinking about all we’ve been through over the last year, but she’s such a happy little girl and I’m sure she will cope with whatever life has to throw at her. It was like we were thrown into a hurricane but all we cared about was making sure she got better.”
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