A young woman has become an online hit after bravely revealing how she puts in her prosthetic eye following a tumour battle.

Gabo Adeva, 22, was initially dismissive of her ailments, which began when she saw squiggly, string-like 'floaters' from her right eye last September in Manila, the Philippines.

Despite experiencing persistent headaches, she simply attributed the symptoms to sleeplessness due to her work as a social media manager.

She went about her daily business, but had a sobering wake-up call earlier this year when she found that the vision in her right eye had nearly blacked out.

She consulted specialists, who told her she was suffering from retinal detachment - a condition in which light-sensitive retinal tissue pulls away from its original position and separates from the layer of blood vessels supplying it with oxygen.

Gabo has been transparent about her illness and amassed millions of followers on social media thanks to her honesty - even showing them how she puts in her glass eye following the operation in September.

She said: 'At that time, if you shined a light into my right eye, you could see that the colour of my pupil was already fading.

'I was losing my peripheral vision on my right side. There were instances where I would bump into someone on my right because I couldn't see them.'

Gabo continued meeting with ocular specialists hoping for a cure, but was shocked to learn that the retinal detachment turned out to be a symptom of something much more severe.

She said: 'My retina didn't detach on its own. There was something pushing it from behind. When we checked via ultrasound, we found that there was already a 13-millimetre tumour growing on my eye.'

Doctors revealed the stunning revelation - she had stage two eye cancer, and urgent surgery was needed to prevent the mass from metastasizing to other parts of her body.

Gabo's opthalmologist Dr. Gary Mercado told local media: 'She had a choroidal melanoma half the size of her eye. It's a type of tumour that grows from the pigment cells in our eyes.

'She didn't have any particular habits that caused it. It just happened.'

As time was running out, Gabo made the practical decision to undergo enucleation, asking her family, friends, and fans to pray for her successful surgery.

She finally went under the knife in late September, and had her eye cut out. The operation took under two hours.

The brave cancer survivor waited a few weeks for the bruising to fade before returning to Dr. Gary's office to be fitted with an artificial eye.

She said: 'I don't know what came over me, but I just laughed at myself when the doctor removed the bandage and I saw myself in the mirror.

'I didn't feel sad, I didn't cry, because I knew I could just get a prosthetic eye and it would look normal.'

Though she had lost an eye, Gabo said her outlook on life has become clearer after the ordeal.

She said: 'My friends were a huge help, and they served as my support system. Without them, I would've been miserable.

'I learned that your true friends will be there for you during the bad situations. They are the ones who truly matter.

'Life wouldn't throw challenges at us that we couldn't deal with.'