Monday, September 23, 2013

Evelyn's Eyes

I took Evelyn to an opthomogolist in Sioux City today.  Lucas went with us and was delighted to have his sister around to chatter and giggle with.  What I anticipated being less than an hour appointment took 2.5 hours while we waited and saw three different people.  As I didn't have a watch and doctor's offices never seem to have a clock, I had no idea how late it was until we returned to the car.  I only heard, "It's taking long time. . ." from Lucas!  They really did well, for which I am very grateful!  Anyway, the end report is that Evelyn has a mild form of Amblyopia in her right eye. Wikipedia describes it better than I can and says, "In amblyopia, visual stimulation either fails to transmit or is poorly transmitted through the optic nerve to the brain for a continuous period of time. It can also occur when the brain "turns off" the visual processing of one eye to prevent double-vision, for example in strabismus (crossed-eyes). It often occurs during early childhood, resulting in poor or blurry vision." She does not have the crossed eyes that often occur because of this.   They will put her in glasses to fix the blurrines in the hopes that the brain will decide to use the right eye as well.  We return in 7 weeks to check the progress.  If there is not enough progress at that time, we will begin patch therapy to help her brain start using the right eye.  The window of treatment for this is up to age 7, so I am very thankful eye exams are expected to go to school as we had not noticed anything wrong with her vision.  I am also grateful to be doing something to help her.  She is taking it all in stride, with her bright smile and was thrilled to try on purple and pink frames!  Thanks for praying and I'll post pictures once she has her new spectacles!