Making News: Ocular Melanoma

At first it was hardly noticeable, then a nuisance and then something much more for Matthew Lollman of Ardmore. Lollman, 44, has melanoma. It’s not on his skin, though, as one might suspect. It’s in his eye and that means just as potentially deadly, perhaps even more so.

He knew his diagnosis meant he might have to lose his eye to save his life. But Dr. Brian Firestone of the Dean McGee Eye Institute offered him another solution – one that would require a team of specialists and a handful of radioactive seeds surgically placed inside his eye right on the tumor to deliver a carefully calculated dose of radiation in hopes of killing the cancer.