Eline wasn’t even two years old when it turned out she had tumors in both eyes. It was the start of a difficult period. Her mother, Erica, looks back. “It’s amazing what they can do these days.”

She kept rubbing both eyes with her little fists and screaming very loudly. That’s how it all started seven years ago, says Eline’s mother, Erica. “She also had a fever and was vomiting a lot. And because she couldn’t keep even a teaspoon of ORS down, she was admitted to the hospital.”

Fortunately, Eline started drinking again at the hospital, so she was allowed to go home just one day later. The doctors suspected it was a virus. Her left eye was noticeably swollen, but that was probably due to the virus as well.

Two days later—by then it was Friday evening—it became apparent that Eline’s left eye looked strange: “It looked just like a cat’s eye; the pupil was wide open,” Erica says. “And the white of the eye was yellowish. I thought, ‘Something’s not right here.’”

She called the family doctor’s office and was told to come in right away. “The doctor on duty was also concerned and called an ophthalmologist. The ophthalmologist told us we needed to go to the hospital the next day.”

So there were Erica and her husband at the Amsterdam UMC on Saturday morning. And from that moment on, everything happened very quickly: an ultrasound, an MRI scan, a diagnosis. Eline didn’t have a virus or an infection. She had eye cancer. She was one year and four months old at the time.

Read the rest of the testimonial on the Oogfonds website.