Over the last couple of months I have been trying to catch up on all of the things I’ve been putting off. Well, a few things anyway. I’m the world’s best procrastinator, so there will always be more things I’m putting off at any given time. My biggest focus though has been taking care of all things medical related, which included scheduling the next well visits for the kids, all of us going to the dentist, and finally getting around to having Zach’s eyes checked.
Way back before Evie was born, Zach’s preschool he was attending had an eye screening. They sent home very vague results that said we needed to have a full eye exam done. Since I was a bazillion months pregnant I shoved it to the back of my brain and decided I’d get it done “soon”. Then when he turned 3, we got a coupon in the mail from Blue Cross to get a free eye exam through the See to Learn program. Yep, I thought, I need to get that done.
Suddenly, we’re coming up on his 4th birthday (holy crap, how did that happen?) and I finally got around to making an appointment. We talked a lot ahead of time about how the doctor was going to ask him lots of questions and look at his eyes and that maybe, if the doctor thought he needed them, he would get glasses to help him see better. We talked about how Mommy wears glasses and several other people in his family do as well. He seemed all right with it all.
The morning of his appointment he was actually pretty excited. We got to the doctor’s office, filled out paperwork, waited a few minutes, then the doctor came in and started checking his eyes. I had a feeling right away that something wasn’t right (I’ve been through this many times myself). After LOTS of testing, he decided he wanted to dilate Zach’s eyes and then check them again.
It took two assistants plus me to hold Zach down for the dilation drops. Apparently they burn, but I’ve never had them so I have no idea how bad it was for him. He wasn’t too happy after that.
After some more testing, the doctor finally sat down and talked to me (while Zach was going a bit stir crazy). Apparently Zach is farsighted, has astigmatism, and a slight case of amblyopia. He needs to wear glasses at all times (other than sleeping, of course). He also needs to be checked again in six weeks or so to see if the glasses are correcting the amblyopia or if he will need to wear an eye patch for it.
Whoa. I wasn’t prepared for all of that.
If anything, I figured he needed a slight correction because I had noticed him sitting a little too close to the TV, which made me thing he was nearsighted like me. I never even considered the possibility of him being farsighted I guess. But, now that I know, some other things are starting to make sense – like why he knows all his numbers and letters yet can’t make them out when I show them to him on a piece of paper.
So, we picked out his glasses that night. There was only ONE pair in the entire store he liked. (Well, that’s not entirely true. He did like the Barbie ones, but I vetoed that and didn’t bother to mention it to his Dad.) The lenses were ready a few days later and he’s been wearing them ever since.
I think he looks adorable in them and they must be really making a difference in his sight because he’s only complained about wearing them once. I expected it to be a bit of a fight, but he actually likes them. The biggest problem really is getting his sister to stop grabbing them off of his face!
Now, if I could only get over my guilt for not taking him to the eye doctor sooner…
