Ella's Eye Visit

Took Ella to the eye doctor today in Nashville. Dr. Donahue is a really good pediatric opthamologist at Vandy. Ella officially has intermittent exotropia...although we pretty much knew that anyway cause my friend Tracey said she had all the same symptoms that her own son had and that was his diagnosis. Basically, both eyes can wander outward occasionally. It is a communication problem between the brain and the eyes. She has to start wearing a patch on one eye everyday for 2 hrs alternating between both eyes. If that doesn't seem to help within 2 mos. he gave us a prescription for eye glasses. They are extra strong eye glasses so they will make her eyes work extra hard to have to focus so it will help to bring the eyes in and hopefully keep them from floating out like they do. Can't do both treatments at once cause if something seemed to help we wouldn't know exactly which treatment it was. If neither of these treatments work she will probably have to have surgery to tighten the muscle. That is what ends up happening alot of his patients. He said there is no cure, so they consider it successful treatment when they can limit the occurance of the wandering to much less than before treatment. He said hopefully it will almost go away, but throughout her life she will probably have times where it happens...especially when she is tired. I started seeing her eyes do the 'crazy eyes' thing as I call it when she was 15 mos. old...for a long time I was the only one who saw it so I felt crazy, but eventually others started seeing it and I started catching it on camera. I am glad that Dr. Donahue is being more progressive with the treatment. Dr. Paul was being very laid back about this, but it is something that needs to be fixed before time runs out to fix it. After a certain time thebrain stops fighting to keep the eyes focusing and chooses one eye to use and leaves the other one...which precedes to lose all vision. Pretty scary. It is sad to know your child has to go through something like this, but then again I feel lucky that it is treatable and not threatning to her health. How parents with children with terrible illnesses can find the strength to go through that I don't know and pray I never have to find out.