Little Tex the ‘perfect baby’ even as he battles rare cancer
When Sydney mum Lace Cogan noticed her son wouldn’t focus on her face, she thought he might need glasses. Instead, she discovered he was battling cancerous tumours in both of his eyes.
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Lace Cogan thought her little boy might need glasses after noticing he rarely looked her in the eye — instead she discovered he was battling a rare and dangerous cancer.
It took an ophthalmologist just one minute to identify cancerous tumours in both eyes of her nine-month-old son Tex.
“They said he has little to no usable eyesight in his right eye due to extensive tumours and only peripheral vision in his left as the tumours are over his central line of vision,” the northern beaches mum said.
“I was on my own with Tex and I was holding him and I remember standing up, holding onto him so tight and pacing up and down the room. I think I asked five times: ‘Are you sure, could this be anything else?’
“He said there was no other possible diagnosis and knew immediately what he was looking at despite it being a rare cancer. I was thinking they were going to say he might need glasses.”
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That afternoon, Ms Cogan, her husband and Tex were at The Children’s Hospital at Westmead surrounded by a team of specialists including paediatric ophthalmologist Dr Michael Jones.
Within hours, Tex was diagnosed with bilateral retinoblastoma.
Over the next few months, the family confronted the possibility Tex would lose one or both eyes — and the fear the cancer may spread to his brain.
“Thankfully, the MRI showed it was just in his retina and hadn’t spread through the optic nerve and into the brain,” Ms Cogan said.
Tex has already endured five of six rounds of chemotherapy, something his mum admits they are struggling with.
“This has been so isolating,” she said.
“I can’t take him to a play park, we barely go to the shops. His immune system is so delicate we can’t do much.
“And he can’t go in the sun because the chemotherapy makes him photosensitive and he will burn.”
But, despite all his hardships, Ms Cogan said Tex remains the “perfect baby”.
“He has been chilled, easygoing, happy, rarely cries, eats everything you put in front of him and not at all irritable. He is just a little dream bubby,” she said.
And while there are still many unknowns for Tex, the Cogan family remains positive.
“The oncologist is really confident that he will beat this cancer and he will survive, as are we,” Ms Cogan said.
“But the head ophthalmologist said he will most likely be considered legally blind. He probably won’t be able to read or drive a car. Outside of that we don’t know where he is going to land.”
The family is forever grateful Ms Cogan acted on her instincts when she felt something wasn’t right.
“If there is one thing I am so thankful for, it is that my GP trusted my mother’s intuition and believed that I thought something was wrong,” she said.
“So often they say just wait and see how he is in a couple of months. We didn’t have time to wait. Don’t ever feel dramatic or that it’s just your anxiety.
“If it doesn’t feel right it probably isn’t. In most kids this isn’t detected until they are nearly two. We are very lucky we got it so early.”
A GoFundMe page has been launched for Baby Tex’s cancer battle.