A year ago today on 16th November 2024 I woke up feeling my left eye was a little blurry but didn’t think too much of it. Two days later the blurriness was getting slightly worse, and so with the persuasion of my family they pushed me to go and see someone.

On the 18th November 2024 my hubby took me to Queens hospital eye casualty.

I thought I may just need some glasses, some said I may have a detached retina which could be repaired, but after a lot of scans and tests the consultant asked me to go to Moorfields first thing the following morning for further investigation.

On 19th November 2024 I’m now at moorfields by 7am with my husband, where I spent the day having further tests and scans. After a long few hours we got told there was a tumour and they would need to get someone from the oncology team to come and check the reports.

At this point everything felt numb and a blur, but the doctors advised I would receive an appointment within two weeks for clearer results.

The following day my family looked into a private ocular oncologist at Moorfields where we could receive the results quicker, so on the 21st November 2024 my mum, hubby and I were back at Moorfields’ private wing with this lovely oncologist who had all my scans up. He then explained I had ocular Melanoma cancer. I couldn’t believe I was being told I had cancer, but after the last few days of worry I had a slight idea the news I was going to receive wasn’t going to be good.

The oncologist explained my two options: option one being very invasive radiotherapy where I could still potentially loose my sight due to the size of the tumour and it would be a longer process, or option two have my eye removed (enucleation) and loose my sight in my left eye and live hopefully cancer free with a prosthetic eye.

Option two was the option I went for as I didn’t want to chance leaving any cancer inside me, and also this would be a quicker process to get back to normal life.

I got taken back on the NHS by the private oncologist I saw for my results who did my surgery on 2nd January 2025. I’ve never been so scared or upset in all my life, but the staff at Moorfields were second to none. They gave me one-to-one care, took time to comfort me and made me feel reassured that I would be ok, and for this I will forever be grateful for their kindness.

I came home the following day very sore and bruised and couldn’t open my eye at all. After about a week of cleaning and drops it started to heel and open, and that’s where more of the shock kicked in as I looked in the mirror at this empty red socket and I felt horrified.

Sunglasses were my new best friend until 24th February 2025 where I went back to Moorfields prosthetic department. They gave me a temporary prosthetic until my socket had healed properly for me to have the moulding done for my permanent one to match my other eye.

29th April 2025 was moulding day and 17th June 2025 I got my prosthetic.

The work that goes into making a prosthetic shell is incredible, and before last year I didn’t even know something like this existed or eye cancer was even a thing.

A big reason for writing this is to make people aware to regularly get their eyes checked, as this is a slow growing cancer that could be detected by an optician appointment, BUT if you ask me how I have finally found the courage to tell my story, it’s for one simple reason - and that’s to try and give something back to the most amazing people at Moorfields eye hospital who unfortunately had to take something from me, but just as quickly gave me my life back to spend this with my family, friends and my greatest gifts of all… My 2 Sons.

Hopefully by sharing this today you can all help me give something back to this amazing charity that means so much to me and without a doubt saved my life.