Amblyopia

Josh was diagnosed with Amblyopia on August 19, 2009. Amblyopia, also commonly called Lazy Eye, is a condition where one eye's vision is much stronger than the other causing the weaker eye to fail to continue to develop. The brain relies on the image received from the stronger eye. If the condition is identified at an early age the common treatment is to patch the good eye forcing the weaker eye to get back in the game. With patching the expectations of improvement are high. Getting this diagnosis had positive and negative sides. On the plus side, this helps to explain some of Joey's coordination problems and difficulty riding a bike, for example. On the minus side, he'd arrived in a new family, in a new house, in a new city, about to start a new school and meet all new friends...and we were talking about effectively blinding him...for his own good. Ouch!

The doctor prescribed glasses and set another appointment in 5 weeks. If Joey's eyesight in his left eye had not improved in that 5 weeks merely by having the assistance of the glasses, then we would discuss patching. Joey took this news very maturely. I read the information on WebMD to him to help him understand. He said that he didn't like it but he would do what he needed to do.

Five weeks later, on September 23rd, Joey's vision had not improved and the doctor put a patch on his glasses over the right eye to blur his vision. Again, Joey reacted well. The doctor gave him 2 exercises to do each evening: color within the lines for 10 minutes, then fill in the o's on newspaper print for 10 minutes. When he first walked out of the doctor's office, he had to hold my arm because he really couldn't see. We went to the grocery store on the way home and, when we left the grocery store, he walked to the car, opened the door and got in without any hessitation. He said to me, "It's working. I can already see better."

We've had some battles throughout the last week when he thought the exercises were too hard, but he's completed them most days. This afternoon we go back to the eye doctor to see if he's had any improvement with the patch. Fingers crossed!