Opthalmology

We went to Skyler's second ever opthalmology appointment, and I love his opthalmologist so much! I brought the evaluations from our CNIB OT, and he said "I'm more interested in what you have observed." He gets bonus points for that. He's the one specialist who values the parent's opinions and observations more than the other professionals because he knows we're the ones who spend the most time with him. He evaluated him and said he's obviously very visually aware and alert. He did the test for nonverbal people, held up some gray cards with a white outline picture on them and said he's testing at 20/200 which is legally blind. But he said, the cards aren't very exciting to look at and he may just not want to focus on them, and based on what he saw and our observations he thinks Skyler's vision is actually better than that. He said he doesn't want to label him as blind, or have people expecting that he has no useful vision and will be using a cane for the rest of his life.. He said he'd classify him as visually impaired because he seems to have more vision than a legally blind person.

He checked out the strabismus (and luckily our opthalmologist is also a specialist in strabismus) and wrote him up a prescription for glasses to correct it. The hope is that he will begin to use both eyes equally instead of just his left. Because his left eye is stronger than the other, and that's why he reaches for things more with his left hand as well, and looks to the left more. I had suspected as much and has mentioned it to the OT as well, so I'm glad the doctor sorted it out for us. It's fortunate that we've caught it so early and have lots of time to correct the problem. The glasses won't help his vision at all, but are just to straighten his eyes out so he doesn't have one turning inward. We're going back in four months, and if the glasses don't work then it's "Arr matey's ye be walkin th' plank!" for my boy. Which is my fancy way of saying he'll need an eye patch. I'm thinking I'd get him a nice shoulder parrot to go with it.. (haha).

We asked him about getting frames for a baby (cost and availability and the like) and he said his secretary could recommend a place for us, then he said "hold up, I actually have some sample frames.." and pulled out some blue plastic unbreakable baby frames. Which he gave us for free. Did I mention how much I love him?? I talked to our friend who is an optician and she confirmed baby frames are about $250 or so, and there aren't many styles available because baby glasses is not a huge market. So yay for free frames from the opthalmologist. Now we just have to get our optician friend to fill the prescription tomorrow when she's at work. Apparently it takes about two weeks because they have to be sent to Toronto. Oh well, I don't think Skyler will mind. He's not exactly thrilled about the idea of wearing glasses.

I, however think he's very cute in them, and I'm hoping he'll get used to it after a while.