Above: Zachary had life-saving surgery last week to remove a tumour in his eye.
By Melissa Meehan
ONE-year-old Zachary is like any other smiling baby.
Just looking at him, you would never know that days earlier he had life-saving surgery and had his right eye removed.
The bubbling Cranbourne boy is content as he plays with his toys sitting in his high chair, oblivious to the cancer that could have killed him.
“He was a normal baby,” his grandmother Elizabeth Moss said.
“But we noticed that his right eye was becoming a little lazy, and turning out and thought nothing of it.”
About a month ago his right eye then started to change colour, his blue eye slowly turning into a much darker grey-blue.
“Then one afternoon his (eight-year-old) sister Kayla came to me and said she could see through his eye,” she said.
“I took a closer look and it looked like he didn’t have a pupil and that he seemed to be blind in that eye.”
The family then raced Zacky to the local doctors, and Elizabeth said the doctor turned white before sending them to a specialist at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne.
“He didn’t know what it was, but knew we needed to see someone,” she said.
“We were told there was an appointment in November, but when we told them there was no pupil they saw us the next day.”
Zacky was then diagnosed with having Retinoblastoma – a severe tumour in his eye that needed to be removed immediately.
“It’s really rare, something like out of the 75,000 children born in Victoria each year there are only five cases,” Elizabeth said.
On Tuesday last week Zacky went into surgery to have the tumour and his eye removed.
His mother Renee said Zacky was a healthy baby, but had conjunctivitus a few times.
“He was always being checked for that and no-one picked up that anything else was wrong,” she said.
“We just want to let other people know not to take a lazy eye at face value – to get it checked out and even get a second opinion.”
