O's Eyesight

Our sweet little O...the issues that child had from birth were multiple. Thankfully, the issue were all, for the most part, easily managed.

O was a bit over three weeks early, although I am not convinced that was the cause of his problems.

By the age of 1, he had 10 ear infections. TEN!!!! The ENT wanted to put tubes in, but my husband and I were not convinced it was the best route. We did some research, had his hearing tested and started taking him to the Chiropractor. After several visits to the Chiropractor, I took O back to the ENT....low and behold, the fluid that had been there for six months was gone. His hearing was perfect and we decided to wait on the tubes and deal with our other issues.

O had some serious food allergies. The poor child's behind stayed raw, he continually was congested, wheezy and rashy. At 3 months, I took him off dairy, and against my better judgement, started him on Soy. At a year, we switched to rice milk and by that time had taken him off ALL forms of dairy. No whey, casein, lactose, nothing. He also had no juice and limited fruit at this point. We often joke that we should have taken out stock in diaper cream. Thankfully, by a little over 2, we were able to slowly introduce dairy again. During our dairy free life, we also did a Celiac diet. In those few months, it was amazing how much he changed...no wheezing, no congestion, great bowel movements...all the things mommy's love. We were able to slowly add back in gluten products without any problems.

During all this time, we also had a chronically clogged tear duct. The thing was nasty. Every time I turned around it was goopy and nasty. Once the allergy season hit, it was out of control. Thing was nasty. We waited until he was two to do anything about it though. We were working on dealing with the other health issues first. We did try eye drops, creams, warm compresses, massages...nothing worked.

Add to these issues, a slowed growth rate and poor weight gain and it made for a lot of doctor visits in those first two years of his life.

We finally went to see the pediatric opthamologist. O was a little over 2 at the time. We were thankfully referred to a wonderful doctor, who I would recommend to anyone! The first round of the exam starts with dilating the eyes and checking the muscle control. I'm thinking it will all be fine and it's just a precaution. Wanda, the awesome lady who does this portion of the exam, kept quietly saying, "hmmm" and jotting down lots of little notes.

I asked her if things were looking good and she responded with a simple, "no". My response was, "REALLY". She proceeded to explain to me that his left eye was not even close to as strong as his right. She said that the doctor would come in and recheck everything and let me know how severe the difference was.

Dr. R came in, did the exam and confirmed the clog tear duct...duh! She scheduled the surgery date and then did a quick exam. She pulled all the lens and prisms out and did her thing - I had no idea how much skill and detail was involved in checking a small child's eyes...it was amazing!

She told me that she wanted to wait a few more weeks and reexamine his eyes after the procedure. She said that she thought that we were going to end up in glasses in a short time. She explained to me that she suspected that O had a lazy eye. She quickly explained to me that it's not the type that controls the direction of the eye, but controls the muscle that controls vision. She told me that at that point, O was nearly blind in that eye and that it would most likely continue. She said he wasn't using that left eye at all anymore. I didn't think that was good...

We went for the procedure. It was routine, but didn't go all that routinely. He was supp. to have conscious sedation, but ended up having to be intubated when he started bleeding too much. His airway was compromised so they said they had to deep suction him. It is still considered "routine", but not usual. They told me I would get him back as soon as he woke up...about 20 minutes. 45 minutes later, a panicky mommy was asking where her baby was. They finally brought me a groggy and miserable baby, whose face was bloody. Talk about anxiety.

They told me to expect some bleeding, but not like this. His nose was dropping large blood clots and wouldn't stop. They made us stay another 30 minutes or so and gave him some more medicine to stop the bleeding from his nose. Poor boy was miserable.

Make a long story short, the tube they inserted in his eye (Crawford Tube) worked like a charm! Goopy eye no more! He still continued to "tear up" when we went outside, he was starting to fall down a lot and was running into corners when he would turn. After a few weeks we went in for a recheck and the vision had gotten worse.

Glasses were given with instructions for him to wear them everyday. This went great for the first 2 weeks...after that...AAAHHH! They have been broken, lost, replaced and repaired, on more than a dozen occasions! To make a long story short, the course of treatment has gone as follows:patch for 2 hours, patch for 4 hours, dilate right eye daily, for two weeks. No change yet.

Praise the Lord, the glasses improve his vision 50% and help greatly reduce the watery eyes outside and all but stopped the running into walls. The running into things was caused by an astigmatism - one in both eyes.

All in all, O is a healthy and active boy. He LOVES to hide his glasses now and begs us to not dilate his eyes. Patching a 2 year old for four hours a day is as difficult and impossible as you would think. We are hoping we can continue to try to improve his vision before he turns 5. We were told that after the age of 5, this defect is more difficult to correct.

Some days, I feel like all I do is follow O around with his glasses and that we spend more time looking for them than he does wearing them!