Catching up with Poppy: Life after an eye tumor

Poppy with her little sister Hazel (Courtesy of Dana Biagini) When Poppy Biagini was just four months old, her family got news no parent wants to hear — that she had a rare, rapidly growing tumor in her right eye called a retinoblastoma. That was almost three years ago. But if you looked at Poppy today, you’d be hard pressed to tell that she’s anything other than your average 3-year-old who loves Curious George, swim class and playing dress-up. “She knows that there’s something a little different with her eye than everyone else’s,” her father Dana says. “But she’s handling it well.” Retinoblastoma is really rare; only about 300 children in the U.S. are diagnosed with it every year. But it does have a telltale sign: in photos, instead of red eye a child with a retinoblastoma will have a flash of white in the back of the eye. After finding the tumor, Poppy’s care team — including Boston Children’s ophthalmologist Dr. Ankoor Shah, neurointerventional radiologist Dr. Darren Orbach and oncologists from Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center — recommended she receive a kind of treatment called intra-arterial (IA) chemotherapy. Poppy and her father, Dana, during her intra-arterial chemotherapy treatments (Courtesy Dana Biagini) Treating retinoblastoma Three times over four months, Orbach threaded a very thin catheter from an artery in Poppy’s groin all the way up through the ...
Source: Thrive, Children's Hospital Boston - Category: Pediatrics Authors: Tags: Diseases & Conditions Our Patients’ Stories Ankoor Shah Dana-Farber/Boston Children's Cancer and Blood Disorders Center Darren Orbach eye tumor intra-arterial chemotherapy retinoblastoma Source Type: news