Heartbroken dad of ‘healthy’ teen who died after suffering ‘blurry vision’ reveals deepest regrets in warning to others
FOR months teenager Abi Marie Dean dismissed her blurry vision.
The aspiring hairdresser didn’t tell her dad, Martin, and delayed visiting an optician due to the Covid-19 lockdown restrictions.
Two years later, aged 18, Abi died after the rare form of melanoma that was causing her vision problems spread.
Now, heartbroken dad Martin is pleading with other parents to ensure their kids’ eyes are checked regularly — telling Sun Health: “If she had told us three months earlier, maybe the treatment would have worked.”
Abi’s death in September last year came as a shock to her small town of Oxted, Surrey, where locals have since raised more than £10,000 for the charity Young Lives VS Cancer, which supported the youngster in her last months of life.
Martin, 40, a plasterer, says: “She had melanoma of the eye. I’d never even heard of it before.
“Most of the time in life you say, ‘I learned from that, let’s not do that again’. Sometimes in life, you don’t get the chance to put it right. That’s the hardest thing as a dad. From a baby to a teenager, I protected Abi, she was my absolute life, all my kids are.
“For it to be taken out of my control, not to be able to do anything and watch it unfold, was very difficult.
“Probably nine times out of ten, you just need glasses. But never take that risk, because you never know what’s around the corner. The quicker you find any cancer, the more chance you have of removing it.”
Vision changes can concern far more than eyesight, including a brain tumour, stroke or diabetes.
A study in 2023 found that a third of parents of six to 15-year-olds prioritised appointments for the doctors and dentists over the opticians. But 97 per cent wish they had spotted tell-tale signs of eye issues earlier.
It’s not uncommon for kids to mask sight problems, too.
Martin, who has been with partner Kirsty, 40, for 12 years, remembers the day Abi told him about her blurry vision “like it was yesterday”.
He says: “She said she could hardly see anything and I was a bit cross with her. I said, ‘Why haven’t you said anything? How much can you see?’ And she said, ‘Not a lot’.”
Abi — sister to Cameron, 22, Skye, 18, and ten-year-old Jay — went to the opticians in the late summer of 2021, four months after her vision began changing.
It led to the diagnosis of choroidal melanoma, a rare kind in the melanoma family of cancers, affecting the back of the eye.
Abi otherwise ‘100 per cent healthy’
Martin claims: “Doctors said there was a 96 per cent chance the radiotherapy would work. Back then, we jumped at that.”
Abi, otherwise “100 per cent healthy”, had five days of radiotherapy.
The disease is uncommon in the young but statistics suggest around 50 per cent of patients die from the cancer spreading.
Reassured by doctors, her loved ones say there appeared to be no urgency around Abi’s care.
However, she began to complain of eye pain and vision loss. Martin recalls: “It was Abi that said, ‘I want my eye out’.
“It was then that they realised how bad the cancer had become, despite saying it was nothing to worry about.”
After Abi’s eye was removed and replaced with a glass eye in June 2022, tests revealed that the cancer was more serious than previously thought and had spread to the then 17-year-old’s lungs.
Abi, studying hairdressing at college, became part of a clinical trial for Tebentafusp, a drug used to treat melanoma of the skin.
The results showed a huge reduction in cancer and were seen as nothing short of a miracle, as Abi turned 18.
Sadly, scans in January 2023 revealed new tumours and doctors warned the family they were out of options.
‘It was a slow progression’
Three months later it was decided that Abi would receive palliative care at her home.
It was mind-boggling for Abi who felt fine and was just starting to enjoy life as an 18-year-old, going nightclubbing and spending time with her friends and boyfriend, Thomas Muscio. Martin says: “If you didn’t know Abi, you wouldn’t have known she was riddled with cancer. It was a slow progression.”
That summer, Abi began getting pain in her legs. Her condition deteriorated over three months as she stopped walking.
Martin says: “With what I know now, I would tell others, bold and strong, take the eye out from the start. Lose your eyes and not your life. That’s one thing we regret. We just left our trust in the doctors.”
In the last six weeks of her life, Abi was at the Royal Marsden in London’s Kensington. When she died, the cancer had spread to her legs, breasts, spine, face and multiple other areas.
Martin says: “It still makes me angry. They never made us feel that this could take her life.
“It was always, ‘It’s going to be OK’. Definitely at the later stages, Abi knew she wouldn’t survive. Deep down I knew there wasn’t any more treatment, and when I spoke to the doctors they told me Abi knew too.”
Martin adds: “Abi was one-in-a-million. She had a big heart and was very family-oriented.
“There’s not many young girls who have got their head on their shoulders like she did.
“My son gives me the strength to carry on. The one thing Abi said to me was, ‘Make sure you give Jay the life you gave me’.”
What is melanoma, what are the symptoms and how can you prevent it?
Melanoma is the most serious type of skin cancer that has a tendency to spread around the body.
It is diagnosed 16,000 times per year, and tragically takes the lives of 2,340 people per year.
The number of people being diagnosed with melanoma is increasing, and it is the 5th most common cancer in the UK.
But it is also one of the most preventable cancers, with 86 per cent of cases in the UK avoidable.
The best way to protect yourself from melanoma is to be sun safe – wear SPF every day, wear a hat and sunglasses and keep out of the sun in the hottest hours. It is also advised to avoid sunbeds.
People who are fair-skinned, have blue or green eyes, blonde or red hair and a large number of freckles or moles are more likely to get skin cancer.
Surgery is the main treatment for melanoma, particularly if it is found early. This will involve removing the affected tissue in the skin.
Radiotherapy, medicines and chemotherapy are also sometimes used to try and stop the cancer from growing. Treatment depends on the severity of the disease.
What are the symptoms?
The key thing to look out for are changes to an existing mole, or a new mole on your skin.
Most experts recommend using the simple “ABCDE” rule to look for symptoms of melanoma skin cancer, which can appear anywhere on the body.
There are five letters/words to remember:
- Asymmetrical – melanomas usually have two very different halves and are an irregular shape
- Border – melanomas usually have a notched or ragged border
- Colours – melanomas will usually be a mix of two or more colours
- Diameter – most melanomas are usually larger than 6mm in diameter
- Enlargement or elevation – a mole that changes size over time is more likely to be a melanoma
A mole that changes size, shape or colour may be a melanoma.
But other signs to look out for include moles that are:
- Swollen and sore
- Bleeding
- Itchy
- Crusty
How deadly is it?
Melanoma is a deadly form of skin cancer.
The outlook of a person’s disease depends on the stage of the cancer when it was diagnosed.
Survival is better for women than it is for men.
“We don’t know exactly why this is. It may be because women are more likely to see a doctor about their melanoma at an earlier stage,” says Cancer Research UK.
The charity says that generally, statistics show that in England, more than 85 out of every 100 people (more than 85 per cent) will survive their melanoma for 10 years or more after they are diagnosed.
- Around 100 per cent in England diagnosed with melanoma at stage 1 – when the cancer cells are only in the top layer of skin – will survive for five years or more after diagnosis.This drops to 80 per cent for stage 2.
- Some 70 per cent live for a further five years when they are diagnosed in stage 3, which is when the cancer has started to spread to nearby lymph nodes.
- At stage 4, when the melanoma has spread elsewhere in the body, almost 30 per cent survive their cancer for 5 years or more.
Cancer Research says the stage 4 data does not account for age differences. Age can affect outlook and younger people have a better prognosis than older people.
Age can affect outlook and younger people have a better prognosis than older people.
What is melanoma?
Melanocytes are cells in the skin that give us the colour of our skin because they produce a pigment, known as melanin.
When you sit in the sun, melanocytes produce more pigment (a sun tan), which spreads to other skin cells to protect them from the sun’s rays.
But melanocytes are also where cancer starts.
Too much UV causes sunburn, and this is a sign of damage to the skin’s DNA.
The UV triggers changes in the melanocytes, which makes the genetic material become faulty and cause abnormal cell growth.
People who burn easily are more at risk of skin cancer because their cells do not produce as much pigment to protect their skin.
Those with albinism are at the most risk because their skin produces no pigment at all.