Rockford, IL — Avery Fitzgerald is a pretty typical 2-year-old. But his mom noticed something was different about her youngest son.
“Probably a couple months I would notice when I was looking at Avery in a light I would see something in the back of his eye,” says Julie Fitzgerald, Avery’s mother.
Julie started to wonder what it could be and went online and read an article about a woman who saw a white eye in photos of relatives instead of the normal red eye and it turned out to be cancer. Julie told the story to her husband Patrick. He says he told her it was nothing, but Julie couldn’t shake the feeling something was wrong.
“I took a picture and I did not want to take the picture because I had this dreaded feeling in the pit of my stomach,” said Julie. “I took the picture and boom. His whole pupil was just white and that’s when I knew.”
A few weeks later a specialist gave them the bad news.
“He took one look and said there are multiple, multiple tumors.”
It was cancer (retinoblastoma) 75% of Avery’s eye was covered in tumors and it had to be removed. The doctors told them had they waited much longer it could have spread to his brain and blood.
The Fitzgerald family found out Avery had likely been blind in his left eye his whole life but tumors started growing just six weeks earlier. His dad says he has very simple advice for other fathers out there.
“Listen to your wife, that would be the first thing,” said Patrick Fitzgerald.
“Trust your gut. Trust a momma’s gut,” says Julie. “And don’t wait, don’t wait to see if it improves.”
Avery will eventually get a prosthetic eye.
He is now being tested to see if he has a genetic marker that could mean he is at risk for more cancer.
Right now his family believes all the cancer has been removed.
