We had Liam in to see the pediatric ophthalmologist today. When Liam was 5 he had a bout of Scarlet Fever and his left eye turned in. Ever since then it has turned in if he's tired, not wearing his glasses or he can just do it on his own. It wigs me out!
Our family eye doctor has been treating it with prescription glasses, but after 3 years, and 4 prescriptions we haven't seen any improvement, so it was time to head down to the children's hospital. And I have to say, they are wonderful! The spent an hour and 45 minutes testing and measuring how much his eye turns in.
It turns out that without his glasses he has a 60 prism dioptre and with his glasses it corrects itself to 30. I really have no idea what that means, but it's not good. The Dr. did explain that anything larger then 10 is noticeable to someone who would be standing and looking at Liam's eyes while they talked.
So our next steps are to go back in 4 weeks to have a comprehensive testing done on his farsightedness to make sure that his current prescription is bang on. If it's not, then they will give him a new prescription for 6 weeks and measure all the prism dioptre stuff again. At that point we will have 2 choices.
Try bifocals to see if that will improve things or surgery to reposition the muscle holding his eye in place so that it pulls the eye back to where it should be.
****shudder****
The cool part is if we decide to try the bifocals they can do them as stickers that would just go on his current glasses, so that we don't have the huge cost of another pair of glasses just to try. But, based on his numbers, it is looking like surgery will likely be where we end up. The surgery would not correct his vision 100% and because of his farsightedness he will always need a prescription both to see and to help keep his eye in line.
So, I need to find some big girl panties, and soon! Of course if surgery is the best thing for him, that is what we will do. I will manage, somehow.....even if just typing all of this has made my eyes water!
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2 comments:
The surgery actually isn't as bad as you think it's going to be (I know, I've had it done twice!) When we were kids, it was full on surgery; these days it's laser surgery and not a huge deal at all. I had my first one done at age 3 and my second in my late 20's. This is common as the muscles stretch back out again. I'm told they need to do it every 25 years or so. Most people have it done as kids, in their late 20's-30's and then don't bother when they're in their 50's. :)
I know you will be able to handle it if it comes to surgery.
Kiddo's never had to go for the kind of extensive testing it sounds like Liam just had. The doctor measures all the prism dioptre stuff right in the office. Maybe it is because he is actually the surgeon so he can do all that right in the office, I don't know...
Kiddo just had a check-up last week. The surgery last fall definitely improved her alignment and she is perfect for looking straight ahead, down or to the sides. Looking up she still has a divergence, but the doc said he wouldn't recommend doing surgery again unless the divergence recurs in her straight-on or down-gazing alignment. I can't imagine how much harder doing surgery a second time will be now that Kiddo knows what it entails, so I'm crossing my fingers the divergence won't come back (but know it very well may, sigh).
Hang in there! ((hugs))
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