There’s one afternoon at work that optometrist Virginia Carlton will always remember.
One of her regular patients, Robyn McCaskill, had come in for the last appointment of the day seeking eye drops. After months of pandemic-enforced mask wearing, Robyn was reporting that her eyes had become dry and irritated as her breath fogged up her glasses.
“We discussed the problems Robyn was experiencing and then proceeded to do her full checkup,” Carlton says. “In an eye test we always take the history first, check the vision and then we go onto the ocular health. And pretty much as soon as I had a look behind the eye, I realised what was there.”
Robyn had a melanoma behind her left eye that was causing the retina to detach. It was a serious situation that required urgent medical attention.
“It’s that hard scenario where Robyn’s come in thinking eye drops are going to fix her problem,” Carlton says. “Telling someone they need to go to emergency straight away is quite a shocking thing for anyone to go through. I still remember the shock on Robyn’s face, then as I was explaining what was happening to her daughter, Robyn just couldn’t believe what she was hearing.”
For Robyn, that appointment was the start of a very difficult period – but she is very thankful she caught the cancer when she did.
After her eye check at Specsavers Waurn Ponds in Geelong, Robyn went straight to the emergency department. Carlton had arranged for the ophthalmologist at the local public hospital to stay late that Friday night so that Robyn could be seen straight away. After an upsetting experience getting through triage in the pandemic, Robyn was eventually seen.
A few days later, multiple test results through the private hospital system revealed the positive news that the cancer hadn’t spread anywhere else in her body. That made Robyn’s next decision easy to make: she would have surgery to remove her eye and the melanoma rather than taking her chances with radiation treatment.
Robyn had a melanoma behind her left eye that was picked up at an eye checkup. Now, Robyn is thankful for the second chance at life she received.
After three months of recovery, a lot of tears and a large amount of bruising, Robyn was healed from her life-changing surgery and ready to be fitted for a prosthetic eye. Ocularist Patrick Loyer created a prosthetic designed to match Robyn’s right eye perfectly, spending three hours hand-painting the iris to get it just right. (“I’ve never had a man stare so hard into my eye as he hand-painted this iris,” Robyn laughs. “He did such a fantastic job.”) While she can’t see out of the prosthesis, it moves with her right eye and looks so convincing that people assume she has full vision.
Today, Robyn is cancer free and full of praise for the medical professionals who helped her through her journey – including optometrist Carlton, who fought for her to get through the public hospital system that night.
What really rattles Robyn is that she had always had her eyes checked annually, but had missed her 2020 eye check due to the Victorian lockdowns. There had been no sign of melanoma prior to that fateful day in 2021. And in the five short weeks between her initial appointment at Specsavers and the surgery to remove her eye, the melanoma had already doubled in size. Had Robyn left her eye check any later, the outcome may have been heartbreakingly different.
“I really think my prognosis would have been terrible,” Robyn says. ”I would have lost my life by now. It was a very, very aggressive cancer.”
For Carlton, stories like Robyn’s underscore the importance of regular eye checks.
“A lot of people think an optometrist is just checking your vision to see if you need glasses or not,” Carlton says. “But what we’re actually looking for is eye diseases, a lot of which actually don’t have symptoms. We’re having a look at the retina to make sure there’s no melanomas or diabetes affecting the eye.”
While ocular melanomas like Robyn’s are relatively rare (125-150 Australians are diagnosed with this type of cancer each year, according to the Cancer Council), Carlton says she normally has a couple of patients a week present with issues such as glaucoma and macular degeneration, most of which are treatable when caught early.
Now, at 60, Robyn is thankful for the second chance at life she received.
“We’re only here for a moment in time,” she says. “I want to watch my family grow, and grow old with my husband and friends. And I don’t want to miss a thing. I’m loving life. If I hadn’t had my eyes checked, I don’t think I would have the future that I have at the moment. I’m back working, driving, gardening, loving my family and friends. So having that eye check has saved my life.
“Hopefully I’m going to lead a very long and happy life with my family and friends.”
For quality optometry and care, book your next eye check at Specsavers.
