News

So I wanted to have something definite to report before I started talking about this, but we're having a medical issue in our house.

Tyler has vision problems.

He came home from school a few weeks ago after a routine vision screening and they said he has problems in one eye. So I took him to get his eyes checked and he does indeed. His left eye has perfect vision. His right eye has problems.

We've actually taken him to a couple doctors already. I was rather uncomfortable with the first doctor. She didn't seem very competent. She had no idea how to deal with kids, wasn't very thorough, and wasn't even willing to state her diagnosis with any certainty. So today's appointment was a second opinion. They said basically the same things, but this second doctor seemed to check a lot more things and had a plan to help fix things, whereas the first doctor had no solutions or suggestions, just a tentative diagnosis.

His problems start with severe farsightedness. I found that interesting because we're all nearsighted. But he's farsighted, at least in the one eye. Apparently he's been farsighted for a while, but has compensated with his other eye, so it wasn't obvious. The problem is that his brain stopped using his right eye, so now it's become a lazy eye. It doesn't manifest itself the same way Rachel's did. The muscles line up and track together, so there's no crossing or obvious signs, but he's not seeing anything out of that eye. Even with a corrective lens over it, he still can't see anything but the big E on the vision chart. The eye can be forced to focus, but it's not something it wants to do or does easily.

So we start with glasses. We get the correction he needs for the weak eye. But then we add in a patch. For 6 hours a day (not during school time, or he wouldn't really be able to function) he puts a patch over his strong eye to teach his brain how to use the other eye again. The doctor seems confident that with time and correction Tyler will be able to regain a great deal of vision in his eye. He'll always be farsighted in that eye, but not necessarily to the extreme that he is now. And once his brain gets used to using that eye, the correction over the eye will actually do him some good.

This will be my second child who's had a lazy eye. But they've manifested completely differently and been for completely different reasons. I don't know what kind of time frame we're looking at for Tyler, but I hope he responds well. He's excited to get glasses (and almost walked out of the store with the frames he chose still on his face). He hoped we got to sit in the waiting room while they made them so he could have them today. Unfortunately he has to wait a week. :( But when he gets the glasses and the patch, he also gets to do things like color and play video games on doctor's orders! He's pretty excited about that too.

I'll keep you updated as I learn anything new. But for now, I'd appreciate it if you could keep him in your prayers!