Photos by: David R. Crane ( Daily News)
Photos by: David R. Crane (
Daily News)
[Actor Matthew Ashford and wife Christina recently
revealed that their 1-year-old
daughter, Emma, is being treated for cancer that causes tumors to grow
in the eye.]
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HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT By Carol Bidwell |
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When Amy Drummond was born seven years ago, Kathy Drummond counted her newborn daughter's 10 fingers and 10 toes and breathed a sigh of relief that she was beautiful and healthy. The new mom wouldn't know for nine more months that her seemingly perfect baby had been born with a potentially fatal disease called retinoblastoma, a fast-growing eye cancer that affects about 1 in 15,000 newborns each year. |
Celebrity parents
calling
attention to rare infant eye cancer; early treatment is key |
Tylo's daughter, 6-month-old Katya, has had her right eye removed; chemotherapy continues to try to save her left eye, in which five more tumors were found. Ashford's 1-year -old daughter, Emma is undergoing chemotherapy that has shrunk tumors in both her eyes.
Orphan Disease Murphree, the only surgeon in the Southwest region of the United States who treats large numbers of retinoblastoma patients, calls the eye cancer an "orphan disease" because it is relatively rare when it compared to other childhood diseases, so few major hospitals or universities have established centers to fight it. But the doctor and some of his patients are trying to remedy that with the proceeds from an August 21 benefit that will honor TV talk-show host Rosie O'Donnell for her work with children. The money raised will go to expand an eye-cancer research center at Children's Hospital of Los Angeles. |
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When Drummond, a Glendale resident, noticed that Amy's right eye was "slow" and the pupil looked milky in low light, she took the baby to her pediatrician. He shined a light into the infant's eyes and pronounced her perfectly healthy. |
[click here
to view |
Children's Hospital of Los Angeles and University of Southern California School of Children's Hospital of Los Angeles and University of Southern California School of Medicine and one of about 20 eye surgeons worldwide who treat children with this condition. About 7,000 of those diagnosed die by age 2, most of them in Third World countries, where they are never treated because of lack of medical facilities or money. But as serious as this cancer is, few people had ever heard of it until two Los Angeles-area soap opera stars — Hunter Tylo of The Bold and the Beautiful and Matthew Ashford, formerly of General Hospital — announced recently that they had children born with the condition. |
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| But, with the doggedness of a mother convinced something was not right, Drummond insisted on a more thorough examination. This time the doctor sat Amy in a darkened room so her pupils would dilate, then took another look. |
"He looked inside her eye and saw the tumor," Drummond said. "If I had trusted my doctor the first time, it would have been a horrific thing." Horrible indeed. Worldwide, about 8,000 children a year are diagnosed with retinoblastoma in one or both eyes, " said Dr. A. Linn Murphree, director of the Ocular Oncology Service at both |
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