All About Focus

I had an opportunity to speak with my neighbor who is a retina surgeon yesterday.   I’ve mentioned her before said how grateful I am for her guidance through this ocular maze we’ve been traveling.   She is never in a hurry and always takes time to explain things thoroughly and in a way I can understand.   We still haven’t met and I still owe her a huge hug (which can hardly cover my thanks) when we meet.   We had plans to meet at the luminary event at our clubhouse but it was quite the packed house and in the bustle we missed each other.    This blog post is about what she told me last night about my daughter’s eyes.

The eyes, for all there physical smallness, are such tremendously complicated organs that doctors have specialties within specialties to address specific components of the eyes.    Lisa told me the goal of a retina surgeon is to give the eye the ability to see.    It is the ophthalmologist’s goal to help the eye see well.   What we’re going through now with my daughter’s eye is to hopefully give her a functioning retina.   Getting her vision to a point she can see will be the next step.

Lisa also told me some interesting things about how her vision can be corrected.   There are three things that can be done.  First, she can get glasses with a lens that corrects for the right eye.  Second, there are contacts for children that are left in for a week at a time that can also correct for an eye with no natural lens.   Third, there is a possibility of implanting an artificial lens.   There are differing schools of thought on this and it’s not something we’d rush into, but it is a possibility.   We will be working with my daughter’s ophthalmologist to find the best option for her.

The question is when to correct her eye?   Let’s say on the fifth of January we get excellent news that my daughter’s eye is looking much better and the retinal detachment has mostly resolved.  She would be seeing out of the eye, but it would be very blurry.   Lisa told me her prescription would be more like +10 instead of +20.   Getting her vision corrected so she can see as soon as the vision is relatively stable is important because of the potential for amblyopia.   This is when the brain is receiving visual input from the eye but it has turned off the portion of the brain that processes it due to lack of use over time.   My daughter has just turned four and we’re in a good window of age to prevent amblyopia, but it is something we’ll have to keep on top of, even if it means changing prescriptions over time as her vision changes.  

I talked to her about my daughter’s left eye.   We’re concerned about losing slowly over time the remaining vision she has because of the low pressure in the eye.   She said Dr. Trese will not want to do anything to the left eye until the right eye is back to useful functioning for her.   She thought it wouldn’t be possible to do a partial procedure to increase the pressure in the left eye without losing the lens like she did in the right.     For now we’re hoping the pressure increases in the left eye and her vision improves on its own (or at least doesn’t degrade.)   Time is going to be our guide on that front.

I want to tell another story about how I was introduced to Lisa.   When our neighborhood was new and barely occupied those of us who were here banded together to communicate.   Tim, one of the new neighbors created a Google group that is well-used by our neighborhood today.    Tim and I see each other at the pool or at neighborhood events from time to time.   We both share a passion for Tesla and Elon Musk’s pursuits and talk about them whenever we run into each other.

When my daughter suddenly lost her vision and was admitted to the hospital Tim heard about it and did one of those all night research binges trying to figure out what the heck could be going on.   He sent me suggestions and ideas and then he texted me and told me one of our neighbors who lived a few doors down from his was a retina surgeon and he was going to ask her to call me.    He did and she did and I have another special friendship I wouldn’t have had otherwise.

Then, today, I get this letter in the mail.   It’s on a medium-sized piece of note pad paper and it’s a letter from Tim.   As I read it, tears were rolling down my face because it was filled with words of encouragement and strength and understanding and hope that everything is going to be all right and a little girl who just turned four won’t end up blind.

Thank you Tim.  Thank you Lisa.   Thank you family and thank you friends for all being there for us.   It means more than we can ever express.

The Big Boy Update:  Signs your son has had too much screen time:  after eating his snack and deciding he didn’t want to finish his yogurt he said, “can I pause my snack?”   I told him he could pause it in the refrigerator for later.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   My daughter “loves” lots of things lately.   She was standing on a stool fondly looking at her gingerbread house and mused, “I just LOVE Christmas…I just love gingerbread houses.”