We first noticed that Lydia’s left eye had a tendency to wander outwards when she was just a toddler, and her monitoring & treatment starting when I stubbornly sat in my GPs office insisting on a referral to get her seen by a specialist.
Since then, we have visited the Eye Department at the excellent Birmingham Children’s Hospital 3 or 4 times a year for her eyesight and squint to be measured. Up until this year, although her squint measures at a massive 45+ degrees, her eyesight has been unaffected, and she has been able to use both eyes equally. Her squint is of the type that glasses won’t help, and the only thing that will fix it is to have surgery – they have told us that although it may improve a little with time it will never get better on it’s own.
The staff at the Children’s Hospital are just brilliant with Lydia, and she really enjoys her appointments. Each test is like a game, and instead of looking at boring charts and shapes they get her to look at murals of Disney characters on the walls and things like that. Instead of reading out letters for the basic eyesight test, she has to recognise different pictures, simple icons of things like apples and houses – and she gets to wear fun glasses where each eye is covered in turn while she is tested.
Unfortunately, her left eye has now become more lazy and her eyesight in that eye is beginning to fail – a “lazy eye” caused by her divergent squint. She has had all manner of tests done, including one where her pupils are dilated with drops and her eyes examined carefully. This test showed that she doesn’t need glasses as prescription wise her eyesight is fine, her left eye is just not working properly. Although she is now self correcting her squint better than ever before, the angle is pretty bad as her eye goes all the way over to the left – it can be pretty disconcerting if she looks at you across a room and only one eye is looking at you!
We were sent home a few months ago from her appointment with a couple of boxes of eye patches, and a poster. By covering up her good eye for two hours a day, her poorly eye is given a chance to do all the work on it’s own, which strengthens it back up. We went back a few weeks ago and happily her eyesight is already showing improvement in that eye, although it’s not back up to what it was before.
Luckily she loves her patches – there are 5 different designs in each box, with glittery patterns on them. They stick right onto her face like a big plaster, specially shaped to cover her whole eye area and fit neatly on her nose. We have made patching more fun for her by letting her choose the patch which she thinks will go best with her outfit each day – she loves to be co-ordinated!
When she takes her patch off after the two hours, she sticks it onto her “patch poster” and it eventually turns into a colourful, glittery, mosaic picture. The poster, which is made by the same manufacturer as the patches, has been another great incentive for her patching, as she loves seeing the picture build up. She even brings her patch home from nursery, stuck onto her bag, so it can be transferred onto the poster. At our recent appointment, we topped up on patches and also got a second poster in a different design – she has completed her owls and is now working on a sea lion one.
Now that her eyesight has started to be affected by her squint, surgery has gone from “maybe” to “definite” and they have started to do the tests they need to get done before she is referred to a surgeon for the procedure. They were already recommending surgery for cosmetic and social reasons (children can be cruel!), but now it is necessary as well.
It is important to get the various measurements as accurate as possible before the surgery so as she gets older these tests get easier to do – but it is also important to get the surgery sorted as soon as her eyesight is back to normal, so that it doesn’t begin to degrade again. She starts school in September and we are also keen to keep the missed school due to appointments and things to a minimum, so it’s a balancing act really. She has another appointment next month, so fingers crossed her eyesight will have improved some more – it has to be sorted out before they will do the surgery. I’ll no doubt keep you all updated.
