Sporting the Spectacles

Today Lily had an appointment with a pediatric ophthalmologist, Dr. G, to test her vision. In about 2 weeks she will be sporting some new spectacles. He determined that she has very poor vision in both eyes but the right eye is the weakest. He called it strabismus ("lazy eye"). Although I've never noticed Lily to look cross-eyed. Dr. G explained that it can happen if left untreated because the brain will tell the weak eye to stop working and then the eye begins to float. He said she was "legally blind." I never understood what that meant when I've heard people say it before. Dr. G showed me by putting a lens up to my eye and asked me to try to read the chart. I could not even read the top line - it was crazy blurry! He said that's how Lily sees. Wow! But according to Dr. G, the good news for Lily is that she is young and her brain can still work really hard to focus. And if she is really great about wearing her glasses her vision will begin to correct and she may grow out of the vision problem (we are talking about several years). If left untreated she would most likely remain legally blind and she would develop crossed eyes. That doesn't sound good to me so we'll need to help her get adjusted to wearing glasses all the time. I know it'll be a huge change for her (remember, she is my sensory sensitive one that HATES change), but if we can make it her new normal then I know she'll do just fine. I let her pick out a pair of glasses today. We started with her favorite color: purple. In about 2 weeks her purple glasses will be ready and I think she'll become a more confident happy little girl when she begins to see her world more clearly.