Chance eye test that saved my sight

A mum-of-two has told how doctors removed a tumour the size of an apple from her brain - after it was spotted by an optician during an eye test she almost cancelled.

Kerri Bishop was not going to bother with the appointment on her daughter's 18th birthday because she thought the teenager would want to hurry home from the shops and start celebrating.

But fortunately the youngster urged her mum to stay and see the optician - who sent her straight to hospital.

Just days later, doctors operated on her brain to remove the tumour, leaving her with 46 staples in her head.

Ms Bishop, 45, and her daughter, Siobhan Watkin, had spent the day shopping for birthday gifts at The Centre in Livingston when she thought she'd pop into Specsavers and see if they had time to test her eyes.

The factory worker had been suffering from blurred vision, even losing her sight for short periods of time, and thought a check-up was in order. But she had no idea how serious her condition was.

She said: "I just felt that my eyesight was not right. I'd started taking migraine headaches that I don't normally suffer, and when I closed my eyes in bed at night it was like vivid colours and shapes.

"I had gone in and asked for an eye test and she said that she had one available that day at 3.10pm but, because it was my daughter's birthday and she was going out, I didn't think she'd want to wait. But my daughter said 'Just wait', so we hung around The Centre and got the test."

When optician Jennifer Paterson examined Ms Bishop she was immediately concerned. She recalled: "There was swelling at the back of the eye and the optic nerve and obviously that's very, very suspicious. I phoned the hospital and they arranged for her to be seen - they advised me to send her off that day. I didn't know what it was, but I knew that something wasn't right." Ms Bishop, who lives in Broxburn, said: "I got a taxi up to the Eye Pavilion in Edinburgh and saw a doctor that same day, and he got me a taxi to the Western General. I went in there and they gave me CT scans and, even at this point I was still unaware what they were even looking for, or what they suspected. Through my own naivety, I thought 'I must need glasses'."

Still thinking about her daughter's birthday celebrations, she was impatient to head back home, but the medics had other ideas. "I remember someone telling me they had a bed on the ward for me and I said 'No, I'm going home', and they said 'No, we'd advise that you go up to the ward and somebody will come and see you'.

"I remember a registrar coming in and taking me down to another room and that's when he told me that they'd found a large tumour.

"I was like, 'Don't say that, I don't like that' but he said 'That's what it is and it needs to get dealt with'."

She was admitted to the ward and given intravenous steroids but, not wanting to ruin Siobhan's birthday, simply told her and 22-year-old son, Daniel Hagan, that she would be staying in for more tests. "I didn't want to ruin their nights," she said.

She broke the news to them the following day, and three days after that, on August 18 last year, underwent surgery.

It could have been a terrifying experience, but Ms Bishop was remarkably calm. "I don't know if it's because it happened so fast," she said. "I just had a sense that everything was going to be fine. Even when I was getting taken down to get my anaesthetic, I had faith in the surgeon and his team."

The tumour turned out to be benign and surgery appears to have removed it all. Ms Bishop spent a week in hospital after the operation, taking only paracetamol for pain relief. After another three months, she returned to work at the Vion Halls factory in Broxburn, and her prognosis is now good. She said: "I feel totally different. I think it was having quite an effect on my moods. I was quite depressed but I feel like a different person now. Everybody's been amazed at the recovery."

Not surprisingly, she has a message for anyone who hasn't been for a recent eye test. "It's a free examination and it definitely saved my sight," she said. "It was down to my daughter that I hung about to get it. If she'd said 'Mum, I don't want to wait, I'm going out', I wouldn't have gone."