26-Year-Old Gets Melanoma in Her Eye. The Only Sign Was Pain That Would 'Come and Go' (Exclusive)

Allie Dashow was preparing for graduating with her doctorate in clinical psychology when she learned she had the rare, risky cancer

NEED TO KNOW

• Allison Dashow began feeling pain in her eye right before graduating with a degree in clinical psychology in 2022
• After tests, she was diagnosed with ocular melanoma, a rare cancer in the eye that has a high risk of metastasis
• Dashow tells PEOPLE she isn’t in a high-risk group, and shares that she hopes others stay on top of their scans and medical appointments so they can “make an informed decision”

Allison Dashow was 26, and a month away from graduating from an intensive five-year clinical psychology program when the pain began.

It was “very intermittent shooting pain in my left eye,” Dashow, now 30, tells PEOPLE exclusively. “It would come and go. It wasn't super frequent, so I didn't think much about it.”

She graduated from Long Island University Post in May 2022 and, recalls, “I went straight out of college, so I finally felt like — I don't wanna say that my life was just beginning, but it was exciting to finally make money, have a job, like not be working on a dissertation and taking classes … to finally be able to like breathe a little bit and relax. But obviously that's not what ended up happening.”

Her optometrist noticed some fluid behind her retina, and recommended she see a specialist. “They performed an ultrasound of my eye, and when the doctor walked into the room and was looking at my scans, he said, ‘Oh, this looks really interesting,’ " Dashow remembers. “You never really wanna hear that when a doctor is looking at your exams."

At one point she was told, “‘The good news is that this isn't cancer,’ and I was thinking, ‘Well, I didn't even know that cancer was on the table.’“ But still, she was recommended to follow up with an oncologist, who performed more tests.

“The doctor came in and proceeded to tell me that I have something called ocular melanoma in my left eye," Dashow says, adding, "I still remember that moment of being told that. This feels like another life, right? It feels like, 'This can't really be my life.' Hearing the word cancer, hearing the word melanoma — it's everyone's worst fear and at the same time, you never think you're going to be that person,"

Dashow immediately wondered how her diagnosis came to be. “I'm someone who's always hated sunglasses," she says. "So that was one of my first questions: 'Oh my gosh, like is this because I never wore sunglasses growing up when I was at the beach or outside?' He said absolutely not.”

Ocular melanoma is rare and, when it does happen, it’s generally in older people with lighter eyes. Those with moles around their eyes are also more susceptible, the American Academy of Opthamology says, but adds, "It's not clear why eye melanomas develop."

For Dashow, young with dark eyes, she wasn't in the high-risk group. Also, she says, “I don't have any of the genes that make you more susceptible. It's one of those three things where it's kind of like, 'Why me?' Not even in a self-pity way, but just like, 'Why? This is so odd.' ”

It was while she was "trying to Google everything I possibly can about this cancer” that Dashow discovered the bleak news: In half of patients with ocular melanoma, the cancer metastasizes to their liver or lung, leaving them with less than two years. 

“As someone with their doctorate, I’m pretty big on research,” she said, which is how she discovered plaque brachytherapy and ocular oncologist Dr. Paul Finger. The treatment involves surgically implanting a device to deliver radiation directly into the tumor for week.

She had the surgery on June 29. For a week after Dashow “basically had to social distance." "Nobody could be within like 6 or 7 ft of me because I was technically radioactive,” she recalls.

The treatment worked: “The tumor is in my eye, but it is dead,” she says. “And there's a very low chance of it recurring.”

However, she now goes for MRI scans of her liver every four months, and a CT scan of her lungs every year, to make sure the cancer hasn’t spread. “As of now, no evidence of disease, thank God it hasn't spread,” she tells PEOPLE. “I think I've managed my fears around getting sick. A lot of people talk about scanxiety. I think I got a little bit of that … When you get that text that the result’s on your portal, the 30 seconds of opening up your app feel like the longest 30 seconds.”

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Along with “distorted” vision in her left eye, the other thing she’s living with is radiation retinopathy: a rare, progressive loss of vision caused by the radiation. It can be be halted by injection every five weeks — yes, directly into the eye — but as Dashow points out, these are not self-administered. “I go to a doctor’s office,” she says.

Now, Dashow is educating others. “Make sure you're on top of your health of going to appointments, getting annual skin checks," she says. "If you're older, getting your colonoscopies. It's better to be in control and even though it can be scary to do these things — because there can always be that fear of what are they gonna find — the sooner you know, the better, right? Then you can kind of be in the driver's seat. And make an informed decision.”

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