Arrrrr Matey!

A few weeks ago I got a letter in the mail from the kid's school telling me that Kate hadn't done well on her eye exam. Kate has never complained of vision issues or headaches like the other kids did before glasses, so I didn't think much of it, but made an appointment to get her eyes checked anyway. When we went in Kate mentioned that things did get a little blurry if she covered her right eye, but again, I wasn't worried. The doctor screened Kate with one of the machines and the results showed that one eye was a lot worse than the other. Kate has a bad lazy eye! She didn't have the normal visible symptoms of crossed or wandering eyes, so I had no idea! I felt so bad that I decided not to take her in when I took the big kids 6 months ago, I just didn't think it was necesary since the pediatrician signed off on her vision before kindergarten.

The doctor spent quite a while evaluating Kate's eye health and vision, and luckily her eyes look healthy, but her left eye didn't develop its connections to her brain properly and her resulting vision is 20/300. Yikes! The treatment is glasses, although her left eye is only correctable to 20/200 with glasses right now, and she has to wear an eye patch 2 hours a day, every day (thus the pirate reference). The doctor said that he's hopeful that with faithful eye patching her vision could improve to 20/40 in that eye, but it will probably take 6 to 12 months. The poor girl really hates wearing the eye patch, it makes it so hard for her to get anything done because she can't see! The doctor wants her to challenge her eye when the patch is on, so we try to read, do homework, play games, and watch TV while its on. But its very frustrating to her. We were able to ease in a bit the first few days, but now we have to be pretty strict about the 2 hours a day now. Its tough! She's been a good sport though, she says she will do what she needs to to help her eye. Sweet girl.

We just picked up her glasses today. She was pretty excited to get them. She said everything looks big now, and it does help her see better, but I know its not great still and getting used to wearing glasses is hard enough without still blurry vision and eye patching.

You can see in this picture how thick the lens on her left eye is. Its a significant prescription! We're hopeful that after some patching treatment that will improve. We follow up with the doctor in a month and he's hoping she will see some improvement by then. Fingers crossed!

I have to admit that I've had a really hard time with this! I know its silly of me, because with a little time this should resolve pretty well, and she'll be ok with glasses eventually, but I feel bad that we didn't catch it sooner (the doctor said it would have been easier to correct if caught earlier), I feel bad that she has to suffer through the eye patches (i bought cute patches to help, she can't wait!), I feel bad she has to wear big thick glasses that are not that comfortable and that distort her cute face. I've learned about lots of people that have dealt with this now, and I know its not the end of the world, we deal with worse every day with James. I just feel sad for my perfect little girl. I guess you just always want life to be easy and smooth for your kids and I just really hate this roadblock in her path. Good thing she's a tough cookie.