Accommodative Esotropia

Quite a mouthful, eh?

A few months ago Ryan noticed that Katy was turned her left eye in (or, crossing it, if you prefer). After he pointed it out to me, I saw it too. I called the pediatrician and set up a referral to the opthamologist. The appointment wasn't for a few more weeks, but I received a call yesterday asking me if I would be willing to reschedule for today. The time wasn't great (during nap time) but I accepted since the original date was during the week we'll be trying to fly back to the US.

I had no idea what was wrong, so went into the appointment with no expectations. Luckily, the base has an experienced pediatric Opthamologist and he was great with Katy. He looked her over for a few minutes and we did the standard vision test. They use cute pictures on the far wall for little kids; so Katy was encouraged to shout things like "airplane" and "horsey" which she loved. He saw her eye cross (the good thing about her being nap time, she does it more when she's tired) and immediately informed me that Katy was far-sighted.

That landed us a trip into the land of having her eyes dilated. THAT I wasn't expecting. It's no fun helping to hold down your three year old and helping pull back her lower eyelid to have dilation chemicals put in her eyes. But, Katy was a champ and cried very little.

The doctor finally did the actual exam. Technology is pretty neat now. You just have to look into a binocular machine and focus on a balloon in the background and it assesses your vision accurately. Once Katy got used to the idea of it she loved it.

The bad news was pretty bad. Katy is EXTREMELY far-sighted. She also has accommodative esotropia (click on the word to a link with more information). There's a 25% chance that she'll need to have surgery on her eye eventually to correct it. We figure those are good odds that she won't need it, but given our luck, we assume it'll happen eventually.

So, that explains Katy's extreme clumsiness and a lot of other small things. We were sent home with a prescription for glasses to be worn all the time going forward and instructions to return once we get back from our trip to the US.

Since nap time was well past by then, Katy donned her cool "glasses" (the plastic things they give you post-dilation) and we headed off in search of a place for her new glasses. We found a great place that had a huge play area for kids inside (thank you, Shannon, once again, for being my phone book and fielding my frantic phone call!). Katy played while I sat with the owner and discussed the pros and cons of all the different glasses types. An extraordinary amount of money later, we were done. We found some nice red frames that wrap around her ears and are flexible and (hopefully) fairly indestructible. We didn't have many choices given her lens thickness.... So, tomorrow afternoon (I do LOVE German efficiency) after school we will go and pick up Katy's new glasses.

As a special treat for great behavior on a really tough day, I took Katy to the closest bakery and let her pick whatever she wanted. She enjoyed a chocolate filled croissant and "spicy" apple juice (carbonated juice).

So, that's that. We're hoping to see some pretty quick improvement in several areas once she gets used to wearing the glasses. I promise to take pictures and get them up as soon as I am able to figure out all my technical difficulties.

I have plenty of other pictures to share, but I'm still working out my technical difficulties at the moment. In the meantime, we all went this morning and had professional pictures taken. Katy was NOT in a good mood nor completely cooperative, so it wasn't as much fun as we'd hoped. But, the neat thing is that the photographer has already put up some preview shots on her blog.

You can see them here: http://jessicastokesphotography.blogspot.com/2009/03/katy-bird.html

Enjoy!

If only it would either just snow or get warm.

Here's yet another desperate attempt to capture the few snowflakes that were trying to fall.

We are experiencing technical difficulties.

Not that I've been particularly good about keeping up here, but the sudden demise of our desktop computer certainly isn't helping things. I checked my email and walked out of the room. I came back an hour later and it was flashing messages of death. Ryan says it's a goner, and since he does things like play computer doctor for a living, I tend to believe him.

Fortunately for me, my new, shiny, pink and fun netbook arrived in the mail the same day. It's fun to get to know, but the tiny part is really throwing me off. Typing is taking a lot of getting used to. Go look at one in a store sometime, it's REALLY tiny. The neat thing, though, is that it has a web-cam built in. I plan to experiment later with getting Katy to sing into it and see if I can post it online.

The only other "news" worth sharing here is that we'll all be heading back to Alabama for a month in April/May. Ryan has to attend a training class there. We're excited to get to see people and I'm planning trips down to the gulf so Katy can see the beach and we'll stay out of Ryan's hair.

I have a few photos on my camera that didn't get lost in the great computer demise so I'll try to get those up soon!