POSITIVE NEWS
The Dayton Daily News brings you uplifting human interest news every Thursday in Life.
Most people make appointments for eye exams when problems occur. But for Julie Beall and her mother, Marianne Hallahan, both of Springboro, routine eye exams ended up being lifesaving.
“About two years ago I was having a normal day shopping at the Dayton Mall,” Beall said. “I was having some difficulty reading, so I stopped into Lens Crafters and asked to have exam.That’s when the doctor saw something suspicious.”
Beall, who said she wasn’t having any symptoms, was suddenly shocked to find the optometrist, Dr. Jason Jones, asking her to go immediately to a retinal specialist for follow-up.”
“He (Jones) really took time and extra steps that I’m ultimately grateful for,” Beall said. “He said I shouldn’t eat or drink anything on my way to the specialist, and it was then I knew this may need surgery.”
Beall, a registered nurse, instinctively knew to expect surgery, but assumed it was likely a retinal detachment or something minor. She called her husband, Gary, a local veterinarian, and asked him to meet her at the specialist’s office in Beavercreek.
“Within an hour I had a doctor telling me that I had a choroidal melanoma and it was (potentially) fatal,” Beall said.
Choroidal melanoma is deadly form of cancer of the eye that is often accompanied by no symptoms and, therefore, often spreads to other parts of the body before it can be treated.
The specialist performed several tests to determine the size of the tumor and whether or not it had metastasized or spread to other organs. “I went from shopping one minute to believing I was going to die within the next hour,” she said. “I found out that if doctors can get to this type of tumor before it gets large, chances are a little better. But it is a severely fatal disease in most cases, once it spreads.”
Beall underwent treatment in Cincinnati that involved placing a radioactive disk behind her eye, which worked to shrink the tumor over the course of a week.
Jones, who has been working at the same Lens Crafters location for the past 14 years, said Beall came to him with only one complaint of seeing flashing lights. “From my standpoint, this is a symptom we see all the time,” Jones said. “The majority of these tumors are benign, but if we see a raised dark area after using dilation to expand pupil size, we always want to get those checked.”
With only a handful of new ocular melanoma cases diagnosed each year, Jones, himself, had never seen one prior to Beall. “Only 2,000 cases are diagnosed each year, so it’s a very rare thing,” he said. “But it’s obviously something urgent.”
Beall said she is not only grateful to Jones for his quick action in saving her own life but also that of her mother, who was experiencing eye issues about a year ago.
“I took Mom to see Dr. Jones when she said her eyes were hurting and she had flashing color in them,” Beall said. “He took us right in and after looking at Mom, asked me to step in the hall and told me I needed to get her to an emergency room right away,” Beall said.
Hallahan was having a stroke and Jones’ quick diagnosis enabled Beall to get her mother in for treatment immediately. “It helped the ER doctor tremendously that Dr. Jones told them the location of her issues,” Beall said.
At 76 years old, Hallahan had experienced a small stroke prior to this one but was not having any of the traditional stroke symptoms.
Today both mother and daughter are doing well. Beall describes the experience with her cancer as a blessing.
“We’ve changed so many things in our lives,” she said. “I take care of myself better now, because once you have ocular melanoma, you always have it. It’s a blessing because I know I have to be careful. I laugh more and love more, because I know time is precious.”
Beall also knows there is opportunity in her experience — opportunity to share her story with others and share the message of how important it is to get regular eye exams and wear good UV blocking sunglasses.
“I’ve been given a chance, and Dr. Jones gave me that chance,” she said. “This is an orphan cancer, and not many people know a lot about it. I just know that had I not had my pupils dilated, I would have gone another six months or a year with no symptoms, and by then the tumor would have been large and may have spread. Because of Dr. Jones, I am here to see my first grandchild born.”
About the Author