Update

Things have been hectic in our world. Which has prevented me from updating. So a quick update...

Billy's last eye appt. was a good one. He is now seeing 20/40 in his left eye, that is with correction of course. He was at 20/100 with correction so this is a HUGE improvement. We don't believe that his eyesight will improve much without correction in that eye, but he is seeing so much better now. And he actually prefers to wear his glasses because of it.

The funny thing is, with the pair he picked out and the fact that he has been wanting to grow his hair a little longer, he is now being called Harry Potter everywhere he goes. He liked it at first, but is now growing tired of it. I find it amusing.

The school year is almost done. I will post another update around the end of school. Thank you so much everyone for your support!!

New Year 2010

Christmas time was a very busy time in our house. Billy's mom works in retail and Billy's dad works in the restaurant business, so not a lot of down time adding the stress of the holidays.
Billy had a great holiday though. Got everything on his wish list. Also got him another pair of glasses. We got them as a back up pair in case he lost his or they got damaged or whatever.
He picked out Navy blue Converse, and he likes them better than his first pair. He wears these all of the time.

We have our follow up appointment with the eye doctor today. Thank God! I am anxious to see if the glasses has helped him at all. I am not that optimistic though because he has been having trouble patching. It gives him a headache and causes his eyes to hurt. So what was supposed to be an hour a day of patching has been more like 15 minutes. I will be talking to the doctor about this and see what other options or advise she has.

I will post how the appointment goes. Keeping my fingers crossed for improvement!

November 13, 2009

Today we had Billy's follow up appointment for his wrist. He got the all clear to go back to behaving like a normal rough and tough 6 year old. This is really good news. He hated not being able to go on his swing set or his trampoline. I have already seen a difference in the amount of incidents of getting hurt compared to how he was before getting his glasses. I really just thought he was accident prone. It never occurred to me that it could have been his sight causing him to get hurt so often.
He still fights the patch. He hates wearing it. It does make him clumsy. So when he wears it, he usually just sits and watches TV. I try to get him to color or do other brain stimulating activities, but he is still resistant. I am hoping that repetition will help and he will give in and stop complaining so much about it. What is sad about it at his age is that he feels as though he did something wrong, and that is why he has to wear glasses and a patch. It breaks my heart to hear him say things like that. I keep telling him that he didn't do anything wrong.
Billy said today that he hates wearing his glasses. Which was kind of strange because he has been really good and automatic about his glasses. I knew he hated the patch. He has told me over and over how different it looks with and without his glasses. He says everything is blurry without them, and sometimes I catch him lifting them and seeing the difference. He has also said that he didn't know he couldn't see until he got glasses. His blurry world was "normal" to him.
All I can do is to keep reassuring him. He will be wearing glasses or contacts if he can for the rest of his life, and I guess eventually that will be his "new normal"

Patching

Patching has been quite challenging. He was really good about it for the first two days. Not so much since then. The eye doctor recommended this web site that sells these fantastic patches! The site is called Patchpals.com. They go right over the eyeglass lens that you want to block out. Completely blocks the peripheral on the side. He picked out this patch. Billy's favorite color is green and he loves frogs. I was hoping if he picked it out he would be more agreeable about wearing it.
It has been 8 days since he has gotten his glasses. And he is really good about wearing them, but patching is a struggle. He is supposed to be doing an hour a day. So far we are lucky to do half an hour. Anything longer than that and he starts to get a headache. He has such a hard time seeing with his "lazy eye" that he also runs into things. It is so sad to watch him go through this.
I have searched for support on the web for patching, and there really isn't much. We do continue with the half hour, I set the egg timer and he literally carries the timer with him so he can make sure the patch comes off when it rings.
I am nervous to think that we will have to do this for the next few years.
This is a learning process for him and for all of us too. He goes back to the doctor to see if there is any improvement in the eye in 2 months.
I am going to look into seeing what it would take to get legislature to pass a bill making it mandatory for all school age children to be screened properly for amblyopia before entering school.
Looks like we both have a long road ahead!

November 1, 2009

First full day with glasses. This was on what we in our family call "the birthdays" My husband and my middle son share November 1st as a birthday. And of course being the day after Halloween, we usually have a very active weekend. Although this time I was pretty sick and they had their festivities without me.

Billy is adjusting pretty well to his glasses. He is starting to realize that he does see better in them. I have had to adjust them a couple of times because they were hurting him behind the ears, but it was an easy fix.

He looks handsome in them. It is hard to get used to seeing him wear them. But I am happy that he isn't fighting wearing them or acting sad about having to wear them.

In the pictures he is wearing a brace on his wrist because he had broken his wrist a over a month earlier and he needs to wear the brace for two weeks after the cast was removed.

Billy has voiced concern about how the kids are going to react to him wearing them on Monday. He doesn't want to be laughed at. But after talking to his teacher she said that she knows how to approach it with the kids so that they think it is a cool thing not a funny thing. So, I am comforted about that.

October 31, 2009 HALLOWEEN

Got the call early in the day that Billy's glasses were ready. We went to pick them up and have them fitted for him. He wasn't feeling well so it made it difficult to see how he felt about the whole thing. At first Billy said everything looked weird and bigger. He was acting really blah and I wasn't sure if he was depressed about wearing the glasses or if it was because he wasn't feeling well. After a couple of vomiting sessions and naps, I figured it was because he wasn't feeling good. With some Motrin he was feeling good enough to go trick or treating. He said that he was the Spongebob that is searching for jellyfish, because Spongebob always wears glasses while searching for jellyfish. He seemed to be OK with it.

We had a Halloween party and as the guest started to arrive, he was happy to retreat to his room and take his glasses off and relax. His fever came back so we gave him more Motrin and he asked before he went to sleep if he had to wear his glasses anymore. I explained to him that it was going to be really important that he did so that his eye would get better. He seemed to be OK with that. And I was keeping my fingers crossed that we wouldn't end up with a constant daily battle.

October 30, 2009

Today was crazy hair day at school, he looks so cool!

I had a parent teacher conference with Billy's teacher today. I explained the findings at the eye doctor. She was surprised as she said that he hasn't ever complained about not being able to see things. I was surprised that as a teacher she hadn't heard about Amblyopia before. That just confirmed to me that there isn't enough awareness out there. And also confirmed to me that parents need to know about it so they can have their children screened to protect their vision.

I have started to seriously think about what it is I can do to encourage awareness and hopefully make it mandatory that all children be screened by a professional ophthalmologist before entering Pre-K or Kindergarten which ever they are entering first. I know that when Billy had his Kindergarten physical they half-a@@ screened his eyes. They checked with only both eyes open and not each eye individually. So they passed him. It was as though he just kept falling through the cracks.

If he would have been screened before kindergarten he would have been 5 years old. We could have started the therapy and he had an 80% chance of completely restoring his vision in that eye. The younger the better the chance. If he was 3 his chance could have gone up to 100%. That is what is frustrating about this. Part of you feels so guilty for not knowing something was wrong and part feels guilty for not being more pro-active on all medical screenings.