Living with Pediatric Ocular Melanoma with Presley and Mila

A Cure in Sight is joined by Mila and her mom, Kezia, as well as Presley and his mom Stephanie to speak to their journey with ocular melanoma.

Here’s a short snippet of each of their stories--tune into the podcast to listen fully! Be sure to subscribe, and share this episode with your friends and family on social--and we would LOVE it if you would consider making a donation to ACIS, or creating a fundraiser on social media to help us raise money for a cure.

Meet Mila, a 14 year old who was diagnosed with Ocular Melanoma in Jan 2021, after experiencing vision loss and changes from August to November 2020. After months of being referred to one specialist after another and not having solid answers, they were sent to a retina specialist, who then sent them to Boston 5 days later to begin the process of treatment for Ocular melanoma through Proton beam therapy.

And meet Presley, a now 15 year old who was diagnosed with Ocular Melanoma at the age of 13 on Dec 17, 2018.

“Doctor’s found a large tumor in his right eye that had already destroyed his eye sight in that eye permanently.

Immediately after diagnosis, it was determined that Presley needed to undergo plaque radiation therapy of his eye.” He shares in the podcast how this procedure was extremely painful for him and a long few days in the hospital. “Presley underwent 3 separate surgeries in 10 days and underwent 5 continuous days of plaque radiation therapy in Philadelphia, he was treated at Wills Eye Hospital by Dr Jerry & Dr Carol Shields.”

He and Stephanie speak to this experience and how taxing it was on their family to receive this news, and also to travel for treatment.

Both teens expressed how this has been a challenge, but as you’ll hear throughout this episode, they rise to the challenge beautifully and truly are the definition of resilience.

A special tribute for pediatric cancer awareness, especially those in our pediatric community fighting metastatic disease or who we have lost to this cancer. You are not forgotten.