The eyes don't quite have it

Today was the Kiddo's yearly eye doc visit. It was... well... it was unusual.

I'm going to do a little background here so you can understand better why I am so frustrated with today's visit...

Two and a half years ago, when the Kiddo was 1 1/2 years old, we took him to a ophthalmologist (that's an eye doc with a MD behind his name). I don't remember a lot of what the doc said that visit. I know we discussed possibly darkening the lens over the good eye of the kiddo's glasses but decided against it for some reason or other.

Last year because I wasn't all that big of a fan of the first doc and because I didn't know there was a difference between an ophthalmologist and an optometrist we took him to a different eye doc. I loved the guy, so did the Man.

The part that made me the happiest with last years doc was that that I FINALLY understood what it is the Kiddo sees when he is looking through his left eye. He's got Optic Nerve Hypoplasia (for those of you who don't know... that means the left optic nerve is severely underdeveloped and the right one is very slightly underdeveloped). When you cover the Kiddos right eye his left one rolls around... I thought he couldn't see at all with it because he never "focused" on anything. The doc explained that the reason he does that is because he's trying to "find" what he's looking at. He can't see the central focal point, just the peripheral so he looks around trying to find things with that peripheral. Does that make sense? It's like if you put a fuzzy thing in the center of your glasses, you'd have to shift your head (or eyes) so that you could see "around" the fuzzy part. There is no fix, it's just like if he had been born with a club foot or shrunken arm ... they can't "make" a foot grow where there never was one, they can't "make" the optic nerve grow when it never did.

He said that the most important thing for us to do is to protect the eyes (i.e. polycarbonate lenses), because he can't always see things coming at it fast enough to protect it and to realize that it is probably a bit more sensitive to light as well. He also said that fuzzing out the right eye would do more to frustrate the Kiddo then it would to help. The "lazy eye" problem isn't muscle it's focal point so he'd just sit there rolling around his eye and fighting us and would accomplish nearly nothing.

Now that's I've covered that, I can explain my very emotional frustration with todays eye doctor visit. Last week when we went to the pediatrician she told us that she would really prefer we take the Kiddo to an ophthalmologist because of the ONH. I double checked and the eye doctor we took the Kiddo to is only an optometrist so with a grouchy sigh I called up the place we took him to two years ago and set an appointment for this afternoon.

We took him in today and spent 2 hours there. They did all sorts of testing on his eyes. The end result was that they say he is now a +.5 in both eyes!! What!?? He went from being a -3 something in the right (and a -5 something in the left) to a +?? The doc tested him three to four times to double check this because it isn't something that happens (kids don't go from being nearsighted to farsighted). Then told us that the Kiddo didn't need to wear his glasses anymore. That right there had me fighting the urge to sell my left arm to pay for a second opinion. Yes vision changes, yes he's a kid so his eyesight is still developing, and yes he's always been an odd one medically but c'mon that's quite the change! And whatever happened to needing to wear glasses to help protect the left eye?

The kicker, the part that has me hugely upset is that we are now supposed to put a patch over the Kiddo's right eye. All day, every day, for the next four weeks. We're doing this to see if there's any improvement in his vision. Four weeks is long enough for something to change if anything is going too. Alright, this makes sense for most normal patients who have a lazy eye problem. Except the Kiddo's issue isn't a lazy eye and what happened to what the doc last year told me? The part about how fuzzing the right eye would do nothing but frustrate the kiddo because it isn't a muscle issue.. ..???

So today we put on a patch. I spent the entire day trying not to cry as I watched my beautiful son, my amazing handsome strong boy... walk around like he was blind! Play with toys without watching them (because he couldn't' see them). Grasp around for the cup to get a drink and having to have me take his hands and place them on it in order for him to find it. He's so smart he figured out that if he walks with his eye looking at the ground he can almost barely see where he's going out of the top of his eye with his peripheral vision. By the end of the day he was rubbing and rubbing at the eye patch. He would NOT leave it alone... he just so desperately wanted it off.

The man says it could help, and that it's worth the effort to TRY. I'm thinking the whole thing is a really large pile of extra stinky bs. Granted the doc last year didn't have an MD after his name... but it sure seemed to me like he knew MORE about this condition and MORE about how to help it then the doc we saw today. I'm baffled and confused about how having him roll his eye around trying to see, having him stare at the ground so he can even attempt to walk... how any of this is supposed to help him "develop" better vision.