October 26 2009

A week earlier I had received a letter from the school. It was results to an eye screening they did. And according to the letter if your child passed you wouldn't be receiving the letter. Which would make since, because this was literally the first time I had ever received anything regarding any of my children being screened at school. In the letter it informed me that Billy's left eye had a vision of 20/100 and his right eye was 20/30. It recommended he see an opthamologist. So I made the appointment.

That appointment was sort of like being put into a tunnel and you really aren't sure which way you are pointing because it keeps spinning and spinning. She proceeded to tell me that Billy's left eye had stopped communicating with his brain and that we were running out of time to help the two to learn to communicate! She told me that his left eye was in fact 20/200 (the schools only goes to 100) and his right eye was 20/35. And considering the right eye is doing all of the work, it was still struggling a bit. She informed me that this condition is called "Refractive Amblyopia" I haven't ever heard of such a thing in my life. I am a mother of three boys. My oldest is 19 my middle son is 13. I went to school for medical assisting, and I was a medical assistant for a few years. And still I hadn't ever heard of this condition before.

The worst part of the whole thing...really is the realization of what is really going on. Even with a very strong prescription on the left eye, his left eye only gets to between 20/80 to 20/100. His right eye is now corrected with glasses.
The eye doctor told us he will have to wear his glasses all day every day. That even if we cannot correct the left eye, she would want his right eye to be protected at all costs. We would also be patching him an hour a day.

Patching is when you cover the good eye completely to block out all vision in order to force the brain to recognize the forgotten eye.

The eye doctor told us that the best time to get the communication going is before the child is 7. He will be 7 in February and that would leave us with a very short window to help his eye.

She explained everything to Billy so that he understood how important it was going to be to wear his glasses. And then we went out to pick out his new glasses. He picked out the pair he liked the best. And I paid for them and was told they would be in within 10 days.

After we went home, of course I cried. Then I started to do some research on Amblyopia. And to my surprise, there really isn't a whole lot on the web about it. There are several sites but they say pretty much the same thing. There just aren't enough resources about this condition. And I am determined to help change that.