Lazy Eye

I mentioned at least six weeks ago that Wes had to get glasses. I knew at the time that the reason for that was because his left eye was at 20/20 and his right eye was at 20/90. I understood that this was a possible case of Lazy Eye. The doctor that examined him that day wasn't our regular optometrist. She was compassionate about the whole thing (I guess she didn't want to wig me out?) and I left with the impression that glasses would help him and would bring his bad eye back into range with his good eye. The goal being that he would be seeing with two eyes or binocular, rather with just his strong eye.

Fast forward six weeks to our check up yesterday. I left the doc's office feeling like someone pulled a big rug out from under my feet. The return of our regular, monotoned, emotionless, straight forward doctor was traumatic for me.

Wes does indeed have Lazy Eye or more technically, Amblypia. The glasses have hardly made any difference. Making the prescription stronger will make no difference, so now we are moving on to specialists. Unlike most cases where you see a droopy eye, a turned in eye or a cross-eyed eye, you can't tell with Wes. Those cases make surgery possible because there is a muscle to fix. I don't believe that will be the case for Wes.

I do at least have a better understanding of what is going on. When the brain is presented with a blurry eye and a healthy eye it makes a decision to use just the healthy eye. Over time the blurry eye gets used less and less, becoming lazy. In Wes' case he doesn't use his right eye at all (even with the glasses). The obvious result is permanent vision loss in the bad eye and a lack of depth perception.

I feel so bad for him! He isn't aware that he is only seeing with one eye because it is all that he knows. He never squints his bad eye, shuts it or rotates his head to see better. He is just doing what is brain tells him to do...use his left eye.

It explains why he does not excel at sports involving a ball... he has no depth perception! Imagine not having any peripheral vision out of one eye or basically seeing the world flat without "3D"!

It will be a few weeks before we know anything else after seeing the specialists. The options for therapy include using a patch over the good eye or eye drops in the good eye. Most hope is with vision therapy. We discovered this rather late and at 7 he doesn't have a great prognosis to retrain the brain.

The brain has always amazed me with its complexity and ability to adapt itself. Apparently, around age 7 the brain kinda stays the same or for lack of a better term, stops growing. We are at this crucial stage right now and hopeful we can still "fix" him.

As most mothers will agree with me...it's physically painful to not be able to "fix" our children when they have a hurt or a problem. We just want to make everything better! I feel guilty for having missed this...even though our doctor said there was no way to know. He is doing well in school, so that red flag wasn't there. I just feel crummy.

I made a ton of phone calls today, did a lot of reading, and now there is nothing to do but wait. Frustrating, because his clock on this is ticking away. He isn't getting any younger!

I am taking Connor in on Friday to get him checked out. I want to make sure that he hasn't inherited this too!