Four Pairs of Specs

Today Gavin picked up his FOURTH pair of glasses since he started wearing them when he was 20 months old.  I can't believe how fast the time flies!

It all started with a disposable camera at our little family trip to Lost Lake.  When I developed the pictures, I noticed an unsettling pattern of Gavin's eye turning in (like above).

So we took him to a local eye doctor who did what he could for an exam on such a little one (as far as I knew)- holding different test lenses in front of his eye and estimating a prescription based on when he noticed the eye going back where it belonged.  Those frames were huge (long story) and his eye still crossed, so I was still concerned for most of this year and eagerly awaiting his next eye appointment so he could have new glasses and hopefully more answers.

His next eye appointment came after we moved, so he had a new doctor.  Same general process, but this time Gavin could do a  little more with pointing out pictures, etc. during the exam, so the prescription was strengthened some.  Still no patching or other instructions.  Just kept on with the glasses.  His eye still turned in, so I waited impatiently for his next appointment the following year.

The third exam was the turning point.  We took him back to the eye doctor here in town and after not getting very far in the exam, he suggested we see a specialist because he had a feeling Gavin was seeing very little out of his bad eye.  So off we went to Casey Eye Institute at OHSU and saw a pediatric specialist who informed us that Gavin's bad eye was approximately two times worse than legal blindness, which essentially resulted in his brain "turning off" that eye. They significantly changed his prescription and had us start patching his good better eye to force him to use his bad eye. (It's his "better" eye and not "good" eye because it also requires correction). Then we were on a three month schedule for follow-ups.

It was at the first follow-up when I had to admit that we were utter failures at patching.  He cooperated at first, but then discovered that the freedom from having the patch off outweighed the pain of ripping it off himself.  So we started the drops.  He gets a drop of Atropine once a day, which dilates his eye and blurs his vision in his better eye.  It is essentially full time patching without the patch. And now he goes for follow-up every two months.

We went back for a follow-up a couple of weeks ago and found out that his prescription would be changing again (just in time because his glasses were trashed!).  His corrected vision is still at 20/100 and they are working hard to get his vision as good as they can before he starts school.  We find out more about his eyes with each visit and are more and more hopeful that we are on the right track.  

I couldn't help myself today, when I noticed the difference between his new glasses and the ones he had been wearing most recently, that I pulled out all of his old glasses to compare. Note the HUGE difference in lenses for his left eye, which are on the right side in the picture.  Each increase in lens thickness represents more knowledge about how our little guy sees the world.

I got teary eyed at the optometrist's office today when we were picking up his glasses.  They put them on and Gavin looked around with those same wide eyes that he has each time he gets a new prescription, seeing the world a little clearer than he ever has before.  And hopefully, one day, it will be as clear as it is for the rest of us.