'We thought our baby just needed glasses before we received a tragic diagnosis'

The parents of a tot whose vision problem turned out to be cancer have spoken of their devastation. When Orla Kearney developed a squint in her eye back in June, her parents Morgan Gillan and Thomas Kearney thought she might need glasses. But the pair were devastated to learn the one-year-old actually had a rare form of cancer – leading her to become blind in her right eye.

Her mum Morgan, 21, from Dumfries, Scotland, said: “We couldn’t plan much for her birthday because of how she is feeling. We have to be careful about her being around anyone else who has a bug, but we are having family round."

Little Orla was diagnosed with retinoblastoma in June after medics found three tumours behind her eyes. She has already undergone three gruelling rounds of chemotherapy at Glasgow Royal Hospital for Children and has another three to go. Her parents take her to Birmingham Children’s Hospital every three weeks for laser treatment on the tumours – and said she hasn’t spent a full month at home since June.

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Morgan said: “At the end of May we noticed she had a slight squint in her right eye. I wasn’t overly worried at that point because she was still so young, I thought the eye maybe just wasn’t focussing correctly.

“Two weeks later I thought it was looking a bit worse so took her to our GP because it wasn’t sitting right with me. The doctor could see something in the back of her eye but didn’t know exactly what so sent us straight to Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary.

“They had a look and said there was something hanging behind her eye but I still wasn’t too worried at this point. I’d been doing a bit of research and thought it was