London, February 10: Making Internet a diagnostic tool, a British mother is said to have used search engine Google to detect her daughter’s brain tumour after doubting doctors held the child was simply “attention-seeking”.
25-year-old Carly Hornbuckle was certain her little girl Bella was seriously ill when she kept being sick in the mornings and lost weight. But doctors told her the four-year old was probably playing up because she was “unsettled” after the arrival of baby sister Imogen.
The determined mother typed the youngster’s symptoms into Google and discovered they all pointed to a brain tumour – which eventually prompted the doctors to take a closer look and a scan revealed a tumour the size of a golf ball, reported.
Carly was quoted as saying, “I knew there was something seriously wrong. You know your own children.” So, she turned to the Internet. “Then we saw a different doctor. I told him of my concerns and that something needed to be done,”Carly said.
After a series of tests, doctors carried out a scan to detect the tumour and subsequently Bella underwent an eight-hour surgery at the Queen’s Medical Centre, and it was followed by radiotherapy.
“The surgery was a success but the radiotherapy has affected Bella’s spine and she will never grow to more than 4ft. It could also lead to some learning difficulty, hearing loss and kidney damage,” Carly said.
—-PTI