A little boy was diagnosed with a potentially deadly disease after his mum and dad noticed his eye was "wobbling".
Miriam and Colin Eckworth took their son, Zac, then 14 months, to the GP after they spotted his eye was moving in an unusual way. After visiting an eye clinic and experts at A&E, having an MRI scan and more checks, he was diagnosed with an optic nerve glioma.
The slow-growing tumours are in or around the optic nerve which connects the eye to the brain.
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Zac's was confirmed to be non-cancerous.
He was referred to specialists at Great Ormond Street Hospital, the week after his diagnosis, where he had to undergo several rounds of chemotherapy. His tumour remained stable for nine months, but then it kept growing, and more rounds of chemotherapy were necessary.
Zac, now 11, has been battling his tumour ever since and is currently part of a drug trial to shrink it. Miriam, from Basingstoke, said: “This was a very difficult time for the family.
"It was hard for Zac, and it was hard for us to see him unable to be a child. Our daughter has just been born as well, and we knew the difficulties that chemotherapy would bring for Zac.
“Zac has a good quality of life, which allows him to recover emotionally from what he experienced in his younger years."
Shortly after his diagnosis, his tumour was biopsied and was found to have a mutation which leads to cells dividing uncontrollably, and the tumour to grow. Zac's medical team put him on a drug trial with Dabrafenib – an anti-cancer medication – and he responded well.
Miriam said: “Every day we feel blessed to have been given this life-changing treatment option. It has given Zac the chance to live a relatively normal life, and Zac can do so many of the things 11-year-old boys do.”
Zac, who is now visually impaired, will remain on the treatment until he is a teenager. Doctors will then stop the treatment and monitor how his tumour responds.
Zac's family say it doesn’t hold him back and he is almost a black belt in karate. Miriam continued: "Zac is able to live a relatively normal life which allows him to have his own identity".
Darren Hargrave, clinical professor of paediatric neuro-oncology at UCL and Great Ormond Street Hospital, said: “Children diagnosed with brain tumours do not have the outcomes that children with other types of cancer have, and better and kinder treatments are a priority.
“The standard treatment for low-grade brain tumours can include multiple rounds of treatment – including surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy – for many years of their lives, and that often has profound long-term effects on their health.
“We want our research to improve the lives of children diagnosed a brain tumour, and the research we are going to carry out with this funding will enable us to do this. It is so important to translate the research we do in the labs into better outcomes to children.”
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