Caroline’s Glasses

Those of you that know us or are friends with me on FB know that Caroline got glasses last week. 

I’ve had a lot of people ask how we knew she needed glasses at such a young age.  We only took her to the doctor because her left eye would turn in to the middle randomly.  You kind of had to “catch it” doing it.  It happened in pictures a lot, especially when the flash was used…not sure why. 

We took her to a pediatric ophthalmologist in Southaven.  We used Dr. Pandya-Lipman.  I highly recommend her.  Caroline was not very cooperative – and Dr. Lipman still was able to get what she needed.  They dilated her eyes and when they did, her eye crossed worse than I’ve ever seen it before.  My mommy heart broke a little bit.  I cried sitting in the waiting room – my hormones had something to do with that, I’m sure. 

Honestly, I expected her to tell me that we would do a little surgery on the muscles in her eye that were most likely “too tight” and be done with the whole thing.  I had never noticed Caroline acting like she was having trouble seeing anything.  I knew for SURE that the girl could spot things far away, so I really wasn’t thinking she would have vision problems.  Well – it turns out, she’s got some definite vision problems.  She is far-sighted.  She can see things far away but not up close.  Her prescription was +3.50 in one eye and +4.25 in the other eye.  It’s a pretty strong prescription – especially for a 3 year old.

(We originally thought she had a really weak prescription but I figured out later that we weren’t reading the prescription correctly.  I was quite shocked at how thick her lenses were and how blurry everything looked to us for it to be such a weak strength so I went to the place where we got her glasses and asked them to help me understand her script.)

So – we took her to try on glasses and she was really excited.  She picked out her glasses and we waited for them to come in.  I was SO nervous about how she would do wearing them.  I was prepared that it would be a major battle every day.  I was wrong!  So far, she has done fantastically.  She’s had them for 5 days and wears them most of the day without a problem.  I’m proud of her. 

She has a 50-50 chance of being able to come out of glasses.  The fact that we caught her vision problems this early has a definite advantage because her brain is still developing.  We might can train her brain that this is what she should be seeing. 

I know most of you don’t care anything about this – but I know some of my family members have been wondering how she was doing with her glasses.  The answer is GREAT!  She has really done much better than I anticipated.  I’m so thankful. 

 

The best part is that we have noticed a huge difference in her eye.  It isn’t crossing at all with the glasses.  When we take them off, we instantly notice it again…but she wears her glasses full time so we know they’re working.  We go back on August 27th for a followup and I’m hoping they can tell the glasses are working.