Cellphone photo revealed toddler's eye cancer

Typically overexposed cellphone pictures are annoying, but an Illinois mom's camera flash helped save her toddler's life.

Several months ago Julie Fitzgerald noticed strange spots in the back of her 2-year-old son's eye, but she initially thought it was nothing, WREX-TV reported.

Fitzgerald said she read an article about a woman who discovered a family member's cancer after noticing a camera flash caused white eyes instead of red eyes.

She decided to try the camera test on Avery.

"I did not want to take the picture because I had this dreaded feeling in the pit of my stomach, and I took the picture and boom," Fitzgerald told WREX-TV. "His whole pupil was just white and that's when I knew."

Doctors told Julie and her husband, Patrick, that 75% of Avery's eye was covered in tumors. He was diagnosed with retinoblastoma, a rare cancer that develops in the retina.

One of the symptoms of the disease is a white color in the pupil when light is shined in the eye, according to Michael W. Stewart, professor and chair of Ophthalmology, at Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla.

Stewart said while it's "absolutely safe" for parents to use a camera flash to see if a child has white pupils, "it's in no way a perfect predicator of retinoblastoma."

"A lot of photos taken will show one or both pupils are white and subsequently an eye exam discloses that it's a normal eye," Stewart told USA TODAY Network. "It's much better to do an exam that has negative findings than to pass up an exam and not have it looked at."

Because 75% of Avery's eye was covered in tumors, doctors had to remove the eye, 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."

Stewart says catching retinoblastoma early is key.

"When caught early it's very treatable," Stewart said. "Current technology and chemotherapies can save the baby's life and vision."

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