Smartphone Pic and a Mother's Gut instict Helped Save a Two-Year-Old from Eye Cancer

Gut instinct of a two-year old mother cell-phone and her smartphone helped detect his cancer in the eye and save his life.

Avery Fitzgerald of Rockford in Illinois was diagnosed with retinoblastoma with 75 percent of his left eye covered in tumors. His mother Julie decided to click his photograph with the red-eye reduction feature off to find his cancer. Julie had read that retinoblastoma can show itself as a white eye.

"Probably a couple months I would notice when I was looking at Avery in a light I would see something in the back of his eye," Julie Fitzgerald told Ktiv. That's when she clicked her son with her phone snapper.

Her husband Patrick did not worry about his son until his wife showed him the photograph.

Doctors immediately told the parents the diagnosis and suggested tumor removal. They also informed that the boy had been blinded by the tumors which started growing about six-weeks before the removal procedure. Had they waited longer, the cancer could have spread to Avery's brain and blood, doctors informed. The two-year old will eventually get a prosthetic eye. His parents hope the surgery removed the cancer and that their child won't need chemotherapy.

"Listen to your wife that would be the first thing. Trust your gut," Patrick Fitzgerald, said.