Below are some of her notes from her observation of my daughter in her classroom setting two days ago. And while this does sound sad and dire, tomorrow I’m going to write about some more positive comments her pediatric ophthalmologist told us about the resilience of young children and their vision. So even though my daughter is functioning as a “severely blind person” (Jane’s words) today, we are still hopeful that won’t be her final vision outcome.
Reese was led to a workstation with work that included geometric shapes which she then tried to identify. Although she held materials within one inch of her left eye, she could not identify them. She worked on returning materials to their correct location on the shelf instead. After a while she chose to lay on the floor and rest. She went back to sorting things on the shelf for a while longer. Then she stood up and walked a few steps. She didn’t seem to know how to move to another location. When she heard her teacher speaking with another student, she went to the sound of her teacher’s voice. She navigated around a shelf to do so. She waited until her teacher could speak to her.
Next she attempted to put together a snack. Her teacher helped her look at cards that indicated how many cucumber slices and crackers to get. She could see the number of dots that indicated the number of slices, by holding the card 1 inch from her eye. She was assisted in orienting the card with the numbers/dots for her. She was able to use tongs to pick up cucumber slices, crackers and raisons. While it did take her a little longer to do so without vision, she did persevere. Carrying her own snack plate, she was able to find and move to the snack table independently. She appeared to use a combination of visual and tactile clues - the sunlit window, the shelf to her left, the dark carpet runner, and her memory to independently move to the snack table.
The children at the snack table talked about the construction going on outside the window. She said the large yellow tracker outside was too far to see. It was about twelve feet away. She did say said she could see people walking past the window. Next she independently cleared her table, brought things to the trash can, washed the table and then folded her napkin and placed it in a slot. She felt with her hands to see if there was an empty place to put her napkin. She bumped into a table when returning her water glass.
She was able to use a tactile, rather than a visual approach, to a number of tasks. For example, she worked on screwing some nails into a wooden board using a tactile approach. She was calm and focused throughout the observation.
The Big Boy Update: My son had an eye exam today in preparation for his EUA on Monday to make sure he doesn’t exhibit any of the congenital issues his sister has. He sees fine and we are all of similar mind from the completion of the exam that Monday’s evaluation will likely show normal eyes. My son has had a bit of an unexpected benefit from the day though because his eyes were dilated. He explained multiple times how things were fuzzy and how it was harder to see. We helped him understand that his sister had very fuzzy vision all day, every day and that was why she couldn’t see well. I think he understood.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter has decided reading glasses are a good thing. She picked them out at a variety store for some strange reason, having no idea what they were. She put them on and decided she liked them. They are +2.5 magnification reading glasses. She really likes them and has been wearing them, including wearing them to school today. We mentioned it to her eye doctor today when she was seeing her brother for an eye exam and she said the magnification may be helpful for her left eye. I don’t know how it’s helping at distance though, but she seems to like it. We don’t know that her non-dominant (right) eye is able to benefit from them either, but if she likes them, that’s works for us.
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