Monday, February 27, 2012

Holy growth spurt!

Today was Jack's official ophthalmologist check-up appointment (the other week was just practice!!!) I always get so nervous before these appointments, even though I really don't have anything to be concerned about, especially since we were just in there two weeks ago. But I have walked in there before thinking nothing was wrong and been knocked back a peg, so I can speak from experience.
Anyways, today's appointment was GREAT!! The doctor wanted to see him in his contacts first to check the fit, so that was really fun trying to get those in after 2 months of being in glasses only. I think we had the element of surprise on our hands, since it went fairly well. It was also an 8:15 am appointment so we caught Jack a little sleepy.
The most exciting part of the appointment was that Jack had a major prescription change. His contacts were decreased by 4...points, degrees, ???, whatever it's called. He was a +22 and now he's a +18. The glasses are down to a +16!!! We were really excited because this is proof that his eyes are growing and developing as normally as possible. His eyes are still normal toddler eyes, they just don't have lenses to correct his focus, hence the changing prescription.
So, back to the optometrist to get new lenses for the glasses. This could possibly explain why he was looking out of the corner of them last week. We may never know, but that's ok, because those are the lenses I'm getting replaced with the new prescription anyways.
No patching at the moment, but the doctor said we are not out of the woods yet and will probably have to patch eventually. Jack has defied a lot of odds up until now, so I'll just keep hope that we can evade that as well!!
If you've stayed with me this far, thanks for reading! As always, feel free to leave comments or shoot me a message.

Saturday, February 11, 2012

...and we're back!!!

Again, it's been too long since my last update. Don't worry, my New Year's resolution is to do better!!! Here's an update on Jack. We entered the world of patching for a half a minute. We were only supposed to do it for 30 minutes a day, so I ordered a felt patch from framehuggers.com that fit right over his glasses. I was hesitant to use the sticky ones only because it was for such a short time. We did great with it for a couple of days. I would put it on as soon as he woke up, and by the time he'd eaten breakfast, it was time to come off. We even did a sticker chart and he earned a giant Brobee pillow. After a week or two, it became a struggle, so we gave up and tried to patch with the contacts.

Ohhhhhh the contacts. I actually got them in all by myself twice!!! We were doing so well. We are still in the Flex Lenses, which seem to suit his eyes and don't cause the eye boogers we got in the Silsofts. They also were fitting great...but apparently Jack's eyes grew, because we lost 2 of them - one we owned for less than an hour!! We don't go back to the dr to get refitted until the end of the month, so we are strictly glasses now.

One concern I have is that Jack hasn't figured out that his peripheral vision is blocked in the glasses. He loses things in his line of sight when he's looking straight forward because he just moves his eyes up and not his whole head. Does that make sense?? It's not a vision issue, thankfully. He also seems to be looking out of the right side of his glasses all the time now, so we need to get that looked at ASAP to see if it's a prescription issue or a lens issue. Will update with that info!

Other than that, glasses and/or contacts have not slowed this kid down one bit. He even did an entire puzzle without his glasses on, which makes us go hmmmmm. It will be do wonderful when Jack can actually communicate to us what's going on! For now, it's just a guessing game, and that can get frustrating for all of us!!! He is just such a fun kid and we are so lucky that he has gone so unphased through all of this!!!!!