Routine Eye Test Reveals Tumour The Size Of An Egg In Student's Eye

Routine Eye Test Reveals Tumour The Size Of An Egg In Student's Eye

Having our eyes tested is a chore that many of us avoid. But here's a story that might make you want to book an appointment at the optician's straight away.

For 19-year-old Alice Walker's routine eye examination found a tumour the size of an egg attached to her retina that was pushing against her brain.

Alice, from Allestree, Derby, was taken by her father to optician, Phillip Bradley, for a regular check-up after battling nausea and severe headaches for months.

After specialists had studied her retina, the light-sensitive nerve layer at the back of her eye, they were stunned at their discovery. The back of Alice's eye was completely swollen and the 'wrong shape' which led them to discover a potentially fatal brain tumour last October.

Within hours, she was in the Royal Derby Hospital, where she was diagnosed with a rare type of tumour which had grown to the size of a small egg and had been pressing on her brain.

Alice said: "I'd been feeling ill for about six months and had been to the doctors about four or five times.

"I had an eye test in April and everything was normal. But when my dad took me back in October, it was a very different story - we know something was wrong and I was told my retina was swollen.

"Instead of it being concave it was convex and my central vision had become poor.

"I was told that I would be referred. The next day, I was in hospital."

In less than a week, Alice was undergoing brain surgery, with consultants able to remove 98 per cent of the tumour, which proved not be cancerous.

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