Wednesday was the Kiddos’ annual eye appointment. Of all his doctors this one is my least favorite! We go to him because he is supposed to be the leading specialist in optic nerve hypoplasia and we feel like taking him there is the responsible thing to do as parents. Because the Kiddo is a relatively easy case I have no idea what this doctor does that another child ophthalmologist couldn’t do. We drive 40 minutes to his office, then the visit takes a minimum of two hours, and we drive 40 minutes back home. I have never had a visit, door to door, last under four hours.
The kiddo handles it far better then you would think. He does gets hungry and bored but I take snacks (sandwich baggie of crackers) and distract him with his hand held game system and a book or two.
This months appointment went the same as all the others. I bit my tongue as the less then intelligent tech tried to get the Kiddo to read the numbers with his bad eye (all the while really really wanting to smack him on the head and say “he can’t SEE through that one dummy”). We waited some more after that, then we saw the Doctor who pointed out the drift in his “blind” left eye. We refuse to have surgery done on him and on this visit the doc didn’t push it as hard as he usually does, which was refreshing. The Kiddo got drops for dilation, and we waited some more. They looked in his eyes, said he looked good, and sent us on our way.
The good news is that the small bit of nearsightedness the Kiddo had in his right eye is gone. He is now officially 20/20 in that eye!! Doc isn’t sure how that’s possible (because the nerve in that eye is a bit underdeveloped) but it is and we are really happy about it. He does still need to wear glasses in order to protect his eyes. So we’ll save up our pennies and get him new lenses as soon as we can (right now he has basic polycarbonate lenses, he needs scratch resistant ones, along with transition to help with his sensitivity to bright light).
3 comments:
Great news, Gwyneth! I'm glad he's doing so well and I'm glad you surprised the doctor. When I broke my wrist, the doc insisted I'd never get full mobility in my right hand again. Ha! I'll make my own decisions about my mobility, thank you!
BTW, the name of my blog has changed to "The Weird, the Wild, & the Wicked".
Siobhan (Meg)
Thinking of protecting eyes and the cost of glasses:
You might want to look into getting the Kiddo goggles -like some pro-basketball players have- for him to wear when he does soccer. Part of that game is deliberately trying to put one's head in the way of a moving ball, which could shorten the lifespan of regular glasses frames even if the lenses are tough enough to withstand the impact.
We've thought about safety glasses, we weren't sure if he'd need them this year or not though (the Man says that the other kids wont be kicking the ball high enough). We saw a really neat looking pair of "sports glasses" at americas best when we were frames shopping back a few months ago. I think we might go back and re-look at them with price and fit in mind. I know I'd feel better if we had some!!
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