How an iPhone Photo Saved a Toddlers Life: Mom Detects Cancer in Son's Eye

A simple photo of a two-year-old boy taken by his mother, was enough to leave her uneasy with the sense that something was wrong with his eyes.

Julie Fitzgerald, a 31-year-old mother-of-three from Rockford, Illinois, saw part of his pupil was white and immediately went online to research potential causes. She read an account by a woman who said a similar symptom turned out to be cancer.

"I would notice that when I was looking at Avery in a light I would see something in the back of his eye," she told WREX-TV last week.

"I did not want to take the picture because I had this dreaded feeling in the pit of my stomach," Julie Fitzgerald said.

She took her son Avery to the doctor to get him checked out. It was soon revealed he had a retinoblastoma, a rare cancer that develops in the retina, and 75 per cent of his eye was covered in tumors. Doctors said that if they had waited any longer to get him tested, it could have spread to his blood and brain.

Doctors removed Avery's eye and told the Fitzgeralds they caught the cancer just in time, ABC reported.

"If we did not get this eye out, the cancer would spread to his blood and to his brain," Fitzgerald told ABC. "Our lives went from normal to cancer, to a cancer survivor in three weeks. It turned out to be our worst nightmare but it saved our son's life."

One of the symptoms of the disease is a white color in the pupil when light is shined in the eye, according to Mayo Clinic.