A stranger who spotted the abnormality of the boy’s sight on TikTok
New mother Lily Fleet posted a cleverly edited video dressing her son Ari that happened to be spotted by optometrist Laura Brown.
Noticing Ari’s left eye had a cloudy appearance and an outward squint during a short few seconds of the video, she messaged Fleet suggesting she get the eight-week-old checked out.
The tests revealed he had congenital glaucoma which can lead to blindness and required an urgent operation to open a tube in his eye so the fluid could drain out.
Lily had been to the doctors already but had been turned away until she went armed with Brown’s advice.
“When we saw the specialists, they said this isn’t often picked up before seven months so we’re very lucky,” said Fleet, from East London. “I wasn’t surprised because I had noticed his eye and been to the doctor, but Laura encouraged me to make sure I saw a specialist who made all the difference.”
“I’m so grateful to her for reaching out. It’s something I’ll never forget. It would be lovely to have an impact on someone’s life like that,” she added.
“I was in two minds about reaching out,” Brown said, a mother of two, admits. “I worried about being the crazy lady on the internet. But you don’t always get specialists looking at a baby that young, so I decided to go for it.”
“He would 100% have lost all or most of the vision in that eye in a couple of months if it had been left untreated,” Brown said, adding that parents shouldn’t ignore their instincts about their child’s health.
TikTok can be a GOOD place at times!
Sources:
- https://youtu.be/aFY2qwxm5vs
- https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/mom-says-her-baby-boys-sight-was-saved-by-message-from-a-stranger-who-spotted-abnormality-on-tiktok/
- https://925xtu.com/listicle/mom-says-her-baby-boy-sight-was-saved-by-tiktok/
- https://readloud.net
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