October 29, 2009

All lot of prep work, with Halloween coming and the birthday's. I took a couple of vacation day's from work so I could prepare. While I had time off, I continued to research amblyopia. I did find a promising research done on children 7 to 17 and with wearing corrective glasses and patching they still showed some improvement in the "lazy eye". Very promising. The depressing part is that they aren't as likely to reach 20/20 vision even with correction, and they will more than likely need to patch as sort of a maintenance in order to encourage constant communication with the brain. And I have come to terms with the fact that Billy will be wearing glasses for the rest of his life.

The most frustrating thing has been so far, that I had no idea this was going on. In hind sight I can recognize certain behaviors that were obviously caused by his vision. At the time, it didn't seem to be a problem though. He would move closer and closer to the TV. He would sometimes cover one eye when he was concentrating on something, but I thought it was a nervous habit of his.

He also didn't do well enough in Kindergarten to move forward to first grade. He is in TK1 program this year. They told me at the school that his chronological age and his developmental age didn't match and that is why he wasn't ready for first grade. I am now questioning that. Mostly because Billy has a memory to beat all memories. And I feel that he was struggling but never said anything. He never complained about not being able to see something and he never had any headaches. There weren't really any signs of what was going on.

With the research I have done, I have found that it is very common that there are no signs with this form of this disorder. And that it is a leading cause of vision loss in children. But only 2 out of every 100 children have amblyopia, and only 1.7% of those children have the "refractive amblyopia". This also got me thinking. How come there isn't more information out there about this disorder so parents are aware that they should have their children screened before entering preschool. I also want to look into why he was screened this year at school and not in Kindergarten.

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.