'Lights were flickering, diagnosis was stab in heart and I'm facing death'

A woman was diagnosed with a rare eye cancer after complaining to confused colleagues that the office lights were 'flickering'.

Lara Vivo, 41, started to notice 'flickering lights' in work meetings, which gave her headaches around March 2019, despite colleagues saying the lights were working fine. She put it down to stress, but ended up going for an eye test as she thought she needed glasses.

Instead, Lara was referred straight to an emergency eye unit in a hospital, where further tests led to a doctor diagnosing her with eye cancer - uveal melanoma. She flew from her home in Bournemouth to see a highly-recommended private specialist eye doctor in Barcelona, who found a 1cm tumour on her right eye and it had caused her retina to detach, causing the flashing lights and headaches.

Lara, who is originally from Valencia, Spain, underwent three surgeries costing £30,000 in Barcelona, aiming to destroy the tumour and prevent the spread of cancer, although it left her with just 10% vision in that eye. For the following seven years, she had regular checks and was believed to be cancer-free - until January this year, when doctors found the cancer from her eye had metastasised in her liver.

At this point the cancer was deemed incurable and NHS doctors told Lara and her partner, Roy Bettencourt, 61, that there was no NHS-funded treatment available for her. Lara is now fundraising for £120,000 of private chemosaturation therapy - a targeted chemotherapy delivered by needle directly into the liver - which is not available on the NHS due to limited research and it not being considered cost-effective.

Lara, a supermarket store assistant, told Talk to the Press: "I had this funny vision at work, but I couldn't explain it, it just didn't feel right. Everyone else said the lights hadn't bothered them at all.

"I went for this eye test and I was shocked to be referred straight to the emergency eye unit. Even then, I never thought it was serious - I just thought I needed glasses.

"So when the consultant told me it was cancer, it was like a stab in the heart. I had three operations over six months, where I had to move back to Spain and live with my family, leaving behind my partner and dog.

"After that I thought it wasn't coming back and even at the start of this year my oncologist told me I was past the point of it returning. Then they found cancer in my liver. Now this is life or death for me, if I don't do anything this will kill me. But I'm not giving up, I want to live."

Lara's vision issues first started in early 2019, although she struggled to pinpoint the exact issues beyond "flickering lighting".

She said: "I asked my colleagues 'did that lighting bother you?' after the meeting. But they said it didn't. Then I was scrolling through Facebook and it showed me an advert for a free eye test, so I went, thinking I must need glasses."

But the optician referred her straight to the emergency eye unit at Royal Bournemouth Hospital instead.