If you’ve been with me for awhile, you know that Meredith was diagnosed with amblyopia when she was three. She was super-farsighted in her right eye, and her brain had pretty much turned off the switch in her left eye. To get her left eye working again, she started wearing a patch over her right eye.
This is Meredith when we first started patching. What a cute three year old! Argh!
A week or so after we started patching, her glasses came in, and she started doing this thing where she would close her eyes because she thought if she couldn’t see us, we couldn’t see her.
She was a total good sport about the patching. I think she even wore the patch to school a few times, even though I promised her that I would never make her do that if it made her uncomfortable.
(I found this sort of interesting. If a child approached her while she was wearing her patch, more often than not, the child would ask, “Why are you wearing a patch?” If an adult approached her, the adult would look right over her head and ask me “What’s wrong with her?” This normally took place at the grocery store by our house—the store where the ill-mannered elderly often shop. Also, they don’t sell chipotle chiles in adobo sauce there, and it drives me crazy! Anyway.)
(Side story: We always let Meredith choose her own frames, because we want her to be happy to wear her glasses. The frames in the above photo (better seen here) were more expensive than any other pair we’ve purchased. When I asked why, I was told that the tiny ladybugs on the nose and sides were handpainted by elderly German artisans. True story. My shoes were probably sewn by a four year old in China, and Meredith’s glasses were painted by an 80 year old in Munich. We Are The World.) There were months when we patched for six to eight hours per day. Sometimes two to four hours per day. For the past six months, we were asked to patch “for a few hours two or three times each week or so.”
This morning, Meredith had an appointment with her pediatric ophthalmologist. Her quality of vision showed no change with the sporadic patching during the past six months. Because of this, I’m pleased to report that we will no longer be patching. (Obviously, if her vision had improved, we would be happy to continue with the patching to see if the improvements would continue. However, the articles I’ve read state that improvements are seen less often after a child reaches the age of seven. We Are Average, and with 20/40 vision with her glasses on, we’ll accept Average.)
We’ve come a long way. High fives to MC’s doctor, high fives to the kind folks at Patch Pals, and high fives to Meredith for being a Super Trooper and never converting the patch into an albatross. ‘ ‘ ‘text/javascript’>
