New Glasses

Around the first of the year, we started noticing Ryan's left eye turning inwards. We finally got in to our ophthalmologist in March, and, sure enough, Ryan was diagnosed with strabismus or lazy-eye. He was somewhat farsighted too, so she prescribed glasses for him in hopes it would straighten out his eyes (though we only noticed one, both eyes actually cross). We got his new glasses, and he looks adorable in them!

We went back to the doctor after he had been wearing his glasses for a month, and although they were correcting his vision, they weren't fixing the crossing. What we also learned was that he also has amblyopia, or vision in only one eye. Because children's brains aren't done developing, they don't see double vision when their eyes cross. Instead their brain just shuts the crossed eye off. The doctor said we needed to force his nonseeing eye to work or he would permanently lose vision in that eye.

So we began patching his good eye for two hours a day and having him do close-up work during those hours. He has made good progress, and he is starting to see quite well with his left eye. We're hoping things will improve to the point where we won't need surgery to correct his strabismus.