Eye Appointment

Today, both Lily and Kendall had an eye appointment with the specialist in Greensboro. Both the girls were awesome and for the most part well behaved. Kendall is so young that basically they look at her eyes and nothing has changed with her. We are to return in 9 months, when she can hopefully read the charts and we can get a better idea of what she is seeing. On the down side, she managed to break a pair of glasses in half on the way home.

Lily is a different story. It has been a year since her vision has been checked. At that point she was 3 and they were uncertain if she was reading the chart right. Today, we were asked if she knew all her letters. She does and is accurate all the time if she is seeing correctly. Matt and I both were concerned when at 60 she could not read the chart with her right eye in glasses. After doing some testing with her, the doctor determined that her vision has gotten worse. Personally, I am unsure if it has gotten worse or they were wrong the first time with her. Both eyes have changed by +2.70. Her prescription is now a +8.5 and +9. This is only increasing her prescription by +1.5. The doctor also wants us to patch Lily's good(left) eye for 4 hours a day. We were given a princess patch to use today. I asked several questions but still am not sure of the answers I got. Basically, I know that she is far sighted, according to this doctor this is going to worsen. The patching is to strengthen her bad eye and should be short in duration. Far sightedness does not correspond to 20/20 or 20/40. We should only be concerned if her corrected vision is not 20/40. After talking with my mother tonight, Matt and I are in agreement that we are going to seek a second opinion just to make us feel better. We should get this arranged in the next week or so.

One of the problems we have is that the doctor asked us to remove Kendall and Zach because he did not want to talk over them. We don't have a problem with that but he was rude in the way he asked/ told us he would not continue until they were gone. He also was offended that I asked at what point does Lily have a visual impairment.

The other problem is my personal thought about patching. I don't like the idea of limiting her sight. I don't think she should be punished because she is not seeing. I understand the principle but don't agree with it. So hopefully another doctor will be more helpful. Or at least I can say that this is definitely the way things need to be done.