Xavier's eye specialist appointment

Pretty self explanatory title :) I just wanted to fill you all in on the latest updates with Xavier's eyes. We saw the paediatric opthamologist about 5 weeks ago and as you know, Xavier was prescribed some glasses, which he has been coping with like a champion. We had our follow up appointment with the P.O. again yesterday just to check and see that the glasses were doing their job. Unfortuneately even though they seem to be helping him a whole lot, they aren't going to be enough to fully fix his eye problems like the doctor first thought. He has quite a bad turn in his right eye and the doctor was confident the glasses would be enough to correct this. The turn has not improved which apparently it should have started to do by now. More tests were conducted at the appointment and it turns out that the right eye has now become what they call a lazy eye.

The correct term for a lazy eye is "amblyopia" and basically the specialist explained to me that because the turned eye has been confusing Xavier's brain, what the brain does to eliminate that confusion is it begins to "turn off" some of the pathways that send messages back and forward from brain to eye. Now that eye has very limited vision and so we need to help Xavier's brain turn those pathways back on again. The way we are going to do that is Xavier is going to wear a patch on his "good eye" for 3 hours every day, so that the bad eye is left to do all the work. Hopefully this will send messages to the brain that the eye now needs to be working. That is the best I can do at explaining it all!

I have ordered some special eye patches from the Royal Childrens Hospital and they should come next week and we will be able to start working at getting this eye right. The doctor said that it will be a tough road because when we take away his good eye by patching it, he will be quite distressed at the limited vision he will have. I am feeling really sad about it all! My poor baby. I have spoken to his day care about all of this and they have been incredibly supportive and said they will work with us as best they can. The director of the centre told me her little boy also needed patching so she knows what I am going through. What a coincidence!

We are going back to the eye specialist in two months to check on Xavier's progress. Fingers crossed the patching will do the job! The alternative will be eye surgery and I am really hoping obviously that we can avoid that, but of course anything that will help him will need to be done. The eye specialist is also going to check out my eyes while we are there next time as I actually have the same condition as Xavier (amblyopia of the right eye). Wonderful genetics huh! As a child I also had to endure patching and two surgeries. The specialist was asking me about my condition when we were discussing Xavier and in our conversation he asked me when I last got checked out. I informed him that apart from seeing the in store optometrist when buying new glasses, I had not seen an actual eye specialist since I was 16, because even though my vision is quite shocking it does not seem to be getting worse, as my glasses script is always the same according to the optometrist, so I have never bothered following it up with the specialist. He told me that this is apparently very naughty and so I booked myself in to see him the next time Xavier goes. He sees adults as well obviously!

Well, I better sign off and get some sleep! Night everyone!