Jack’s Story

2017 didn’t start how the Stokes family thought it would. They were told by 2 doctors here in Gladstone, one GP and one ED Doctor that Jack had a lazy eye. If it weren’t for Lara’s ‘mummy instinct’ Jack could have lost his life.

Jack is a normal two and half year old with loads of energy always happily playing and running amuck. But 2 months ago Lara had noticed that his right eye had started to deviate outwards but at first dismissed it as a lazy eye. A week later she noticed that his eye had a ‘glow’ and as mummy’s do, Lara researched, ‘glow in my toddlers eye’ and Retinoblastoma came up. Not wanting to jump to conclusions with Doctor Google Lara took a pic with the flash on and sent the pic to her friend in Perth who is a scientist. Her friend advised her to take Jack to the emergency department straight away as it looked like a Retinoblastoma and the family did on January 1st New Year’s Day. The Stoke’s family waited 5 hours to basically be told they were wasting their time, that it wasn’t urgent and to take him to an optometrist as it seemed like a lazy eye and very unlikely to be Retinoblastoma. The family then took Jack to the optometrist as instructed and they referred them to an ophthalmologist in Brisbane locking in an appointment the following Monday.  The ophthalmologist sent Jack and his parents urgently to Lady Cilento Children’s hospital who arranged for emergent exploratory surgery for Jack the following day. They then confirmed it was Retinoblastoma and that Friday Jack had to have his eye removed.