Colby Ramos-Francis was born in Corsham, Wiltshire, with a small heart-shaped strawberry mark on his right eyelid — an infantile hemangioma, a benign tangle of blood vessels. In most children the mark fades. In Colby it grew. By 17 months the mass was about two inches across, stretching the lid, pressing on the cornea and blocking the eye. Doctors in Bristol prescribed medicine and said he was too young for surgery; the wait on the National Health Service stretched on. His mother, Aimee Ramos-Price, then 18, and father, Jamie Francis, feared he would lose sight in that eye and be left with a heavy scar.

Aimee posted in a Facebook group for parents of children with hemangiomas. The photos reached Dr. Milton Waner, director of the Vascular Birthmark Institute of New York at Lenox Hill Hospital. Eyelid hemangiomas can flatten the cornea, cause astigmatism and teach the brain to ignore the eye — amblyopia that becomes permanent if the obstruction lasts. Waner judged the case urgent.

The Little Baby Face Foundation, co-founded by facial plastic surgeon Dr. Thomas Romo III, paid for flights, lodging at Ronald McDonald House and care that would have cost about $50,000. On 4 February 2015, at Lenox Hill, Waner worked with Romo and head-and-neck surgeon Dr. Teresa O. They marked the incisions, then used a fine electrocautery needle to separate the spongy vascular mass from eyelid and muscle without cutting the globe or the optic nerve. The operation lasted about an hour and a half. The lid, stretched by months of growth, would need time — and possibly a later touch-up — to settle.

Afterward Colby’s vision was intact. The stretched skin and the months of deprivation left him needing glasses while the eye learned to work again. Surgeons called the result good. His mother called it amazing: a “normal little boy” in the recovery room.

Infantile hemangiomas on the eyelid are not cancer, but they are not harmless if they cover the visual axis. Volunteer teams in New York exist because some families cannot wait, and because a precise resection before the brain gives up on that eye can mean a childhood of play instead of a blind side. Colby’s case is one of those: a growth that started as a birthmark, a mother who posted a picture, and a city that flew a toddler across the Atlantic so he could see.

Sources

New York Daily News report on Colby Ramos-Francis’s surgery at Lenox Hill Hospital, February 2015

New York Post pre-operative account of the Little Baby Face Foundation case

TODAY interview with Dr. Thomas Romo III after the tumor removal

Headlines & Global News and related UK–US coverage of the Facebook referral to Dr. Milton Waner

Vascular Birthmark Institute of New York guidance on eyelid hemangioma and risk of amblyopia