“He’s out playing football and golf and loves riding his bike. If you didn’t know he had cancer, you wouldn’t know when you look at him.”

A mum claims doctors ‘fobbed off’ her tot’s swollen eye as holiday ‘hay fever’ – and only discovered he had leukaemia after she refused to go away.

Carole Lawrie first became concerned about her son Hugo Lawrie’s swollen right eye after returning from a family holiday in the South of France in July 2023. When the now three-year-old’s eye symptom persisted, the mum-of-eight took him to see a GP to get it checked out.

Post-holiday snaps show her tiny tot’s right eye partially closed with a lump under the eyelid in August 2023. At first, the 40-year-old claims a doctor said her son’s inflated eye was a virus, before a second one dismissed it as ‘hay fever’.

It was only when Carole booked a third doctor’s appointment the same day and pushed for another opinion, that Hugo was sent to Ninewells Hospital in Dundee. Sadly, after his bloods were taken, Hugo was transferred to Edinburgh Royal Hospital where he was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia following an MRI scan and a biopsy.

He then underwent three rounds of chemotherapy and underwent a stem cell transplant at Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow. Following his treatment, Hugo is now cancer-free and an MRI scan in January 2025 confirmed he is still in the all-clear.

Carole is now urging other parents to advocate for their children’s health as she feels Hugo’s prognosis may have been worse if he wasn’t seen so quickly.

Carole, who lives outside of Perth in Scotland, said: “When we got home from holiday, Hugo had a swollen eye and a lump under his eye. I just thought it was an infection as he had been absolutely fine on holiday. His eye didn’t look right so I wanted to get it checked out.

“I got an appointment at the doctors and they said it was just a virus and not anything. I’m not against the GPs but I felt like they didn’t take any notice of the fact that I thought there was something else underlying. Two days later, Hugo woke up and his eye looked worse. I took him to the GP and they told me to keep cleaning his eye and it’s just a virus or hay fever.

“They didn’t think much of it. The GP felt the lump under his eye and dismissed this as hay fever. They said they would refer us to ophthalmology but I wasn’t happy with this as I felt it needed to be looked at quickly.

“I rang the GP back and saw a third doctor that same day. I saw three doctors in three days. I said I was really not happy and he needed to be seen by someone else and they told me to wait for the ophthalmology appointment in a couple of weeks and I said no.

“Underneath his eye there was a hard lump about the size of a five-pence piece and it was a little swollen like an infection. [Finally, at the third appointment], the GP then referred me to the local hospital to get another check up.

“The MRI showed that Hugo had a few tumours and they took a biopsy of the tumour under her eye as this was the easiest one for them to get too. He was then diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia which is unusual for children to get. It was hard finding out about Hugo’s diagnosis.”

On the NHS website, acute myeloid leukaemia is an aggressive form of cancer which requires immediate treatment and left untreated can be life-threatening.

Carole says if Hugo was referred to the hospital in August 2023, his cancer prognosis may have been very different.

Carole said: “It is really annoying that the doctors fobbed it off as hay fever or allergies and it angered me a little bit. I think to myself, if I hadn’t gone back [the third time] and pushed to be seen further, who knows where we would be.

“I would say to parents to keep pushing [at the doctors]. We had a few junior doctors come into the hospital when Hugo was there and I told them to always listen to the parents and to never dismiss what they are saying as we know our kids better than anyone else.

“I don’t know if it would have changed his diagnosis but had I not gone back [to the doctors] and pushed it, the prognosis might have been worse. It really annoyed me. You shouldn’t have to fight and push this hard when you know something is wrong.

“If a parent is coming at you saying something is wrong with their child, you should listen.”

In March 2024, Hugo was discharged from Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow and has been enjoying life at home with his family ever since.

Carole says Hugo will have to be on medication for life but is a happy, healthy three-year-old.

Carole said: “He’s clear from cancer now but they had to wait until we got a few MRI scans that said it was clear [to confirm this]. He’s out playing football and golf and loves riding his bike. If you didn’t know he had cancer, you wouldn’t know when you look at him.”