British 15-year-old Aleksandra Djelic was just 7 years old when she discovered a lump in her eye in 2016. Aleksandra, who diagnosed herself as a ‘cyst’, revealed that the lump that caused the lazy eye was removed and the lump recurred. This prompted her 37-year-old mother, Dana Celic, to insist on further tests that revealed that Alexandra, known as Alex, had an extremely rare form of cancer.
DISEASE IS RARE
After an MRI scan and biopsy, he was diagnosed with chordoma cancer, and doctors were left in shock as the disease typically affects people between the ages of 40 and 60. In addition, this disease was more common in men than women.
As if all this weren’t rare enough, the disease itself is typically found in the spinal cord.
THEY HAD TO TAKE THE WHOLE EYES OF THEM
While Alex’s cancer was initially treated by removing the eye socket, which the doctor had painstakingly reconstructed with a bone in his leg, the doctors were eventually left with no choice but to remove his entire eye. His mother told MyLondon: “He took it really well when we told him he had to go. He took it better than we did, he was very brave.”
Alex cleared completely after his eye was removed, but tragedy struck in February of last year when a routine scan revealed a mass that turned out to be cancer. It continued to spread significantly over the next six months, and the teenager was informed that it was fatal.
“When they say there’s nothing they can do, ‘Am I going to die?’ He asked, they said yes. I think he was worried at first, then he got better. Eventually she was tied to the bed and lost sensation in her eyelids, so we had to lift the eyelid. He lost consciousness and only breathed and coughed for about three days. On the day he died, he and his sisters were able to make handprints on a canvas. He had a big smile on his face. He died about 10 minutes later.”