A father-of-three found himself at risk of losing his eyesight after a cancerous tumour on his eyelid swelled to “the size of a cherry tomato”, taking over his whole eye and weighing it shut.
Brett Exton, 55, who lives in Bridgend, Wales, noticed a small lump on his right eyelid just before flying out to Mexico for a family holiday in August last year, but he believed it was just a pimple or a stye – a round, slightly red lump on the upper lid by the eyelashes. The IT database manager said it was “almost insignificant”, but as the days progressed, the lump “started getting bigger and bigger and bigger”.
He visited a hospital in Mexico, where doctors drained the lump and glued the wound back together. Back home the lump continued to grow and, after he was unable to get an appointment at his regular opticians, he went into Specsavers where the team saw him immediately and referred him to the Princess of Wales Hospital the same day.
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Brett was later diagnosed with cancer and underwent four operations, and while he is now living with some “debilitating” side-effects and struggles with depression, he said he feels incredibly lucky that the cancerous tumour was diagnosed and removed so promptly.
“I’m grateful to Specsavers and I’m very grateful to the NHS,” he said. “The treatment that I had from the NHS, it’s all free – it’s a marvellous thing that probably saved my life.”
“(The doctor in Mexico) only glued the slit that she’d made, she’d used liquid glue, but because it was still going up, because it was still swelling, it literally then just tore through that; it just tore that open and carried on growing,” Brett said.
“So by the time I got home, it was the size of a cherry tomato. The sheer weight of it – it’s all on the top eyelid, it’s nothing to do with the bottom eyelid – it could drag the eye down closed.”
Brett went to A&E in Bridgend, was given some cream, and was told by a doctor: “I promise you, by Monday, you’ll feel the benefit, it will be going down.”
However, by Monday, Brett said “it was no better” and he decided to take matters into his own hands." Out of sheer frustration, I put my coat on and I went into Bridgend town and I walked straight into Specsavers,” he said.
“I said to the person on the front desk, ‘Look, anything you can do for this?’ And I took my sunglasses off, and it all then went from there.”
After being examined, Brett was referred to Princess of Wales Hospital and, a week later, after doctors had taken a biopsy of the eyelid, he was diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma – a form of skin cancer which is usually caused by sun exposure. The father of three said he received the news at 9am and went in for his first operation at 4pm the same day, only giving him a few hours to process the news that he had cancer.
“It was about four or five hours that I had to dwell on, ‘I’ve got cancer’, before it was removed,” he said. After the diagnosis in September, Brett had to undergo four surgical procedures in five weeks.
The first was the biopsy, followed by the amputation of his top eyelid, which contained the tumour. After that, half of his bottom eyelid was removed to replace the missing upper eyelid, and Brett said at that point his eyelid looked like “a sandwich that had been folded over”.
Then, to reconstruct his lower eyelid during the fourth operation, doctors used skin from the roof of his mouth and his temple. Brett said he now has no eyelashes on his right eye, but the evidence of the operations is hardly noticeable, adding: “People say to me, ‘God, I wouldn’t even know you’ve had it done’.”
However, despite appearing fit and well externally, he said “the side-effects are absolutely chronic”. “People see the surgery completed, all the healing is done, but… it’s a life-changing operation,” he explained.
“I live literally with constant dry eye; I’ve tried creams, I’ve tried drops, I’ve tried everything, and not one single thing medicinal works. If I go outside, the cold air blowing on my eye makes my eye water and stream, and that’s quite blissful.
“It’s heaven to be outside because you come inside and the dry air and the central heating makes it 10 times worse.”
On top of this, Brett explained that he experiences fatigue, eye strain and headaches and, due to the “brutal” impacts of the operations, both physically and mentally, he is now suffering depression. He said he always believed he was mentally strong, but some days it feels like his depression “knocks (his) legs from underneath (him)”.
“I’m thrilled to bits that I can look in the mirror and I don’t look like a horror story, but the side-effects are truly debilitating,” Brett said. “Some days, you can be really depressed. Depression is another thing that just comes out of nowhere at you.
“You just dream about being well, but I know that I’m never going to be well, so that can heighten the depression. You play these mental games with yourself – don’t be so ungrateful, don’t be so hard on yourself – so it’s a massive journey.”
Brett is having counselling, which he would recommend to anyone, and said keeping active, going outside, and completing tasks daily are all helping to keep his spirits up. He is still able to drive – although he does not drive at night – and his eyesight has not been too badly affected, as he still has “perfect vision” in his left eye.
Although Brett is still learning to accept the long-term physical impacts of the operations, he is “very grateful” to Specsavers and the NHS, and he would advise everyone to listen to their bodies and to get any lumps checked.
“Be very alert… There are parts of your body that tell you messages of, ‘I’m not well’,” he said. "If a lump suddenly appears, well, you know that that wasn’t there last week or yesterday, and to get it checked out as soon as you can.”
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