Moved Up EUA

My daughter’s vision has been declining lately.  I know, you’re thinking how can it possibly get worse than it already is, right?   It’s the cataract in the left eye—or at least we think that’s what it is.  

Before jumping to conclusions my husband and I watched her behavior carefully.   We talked to other people who were around my daughter a lot.   I spoken with teachers and staff at our school and I’ve had conversations with the two vision impairment teachers who work with my daughter.   We all agree, it’s getting worse.

Aside from things being more difficult to discern in general, she’s having color differentiation difficulties.   This means dark pink and red might get sorted into the same group or something that’s peach might be labeled orange.    Silver, black, brown, grey and some other colors are harder still to tell apart.    These are things she could do in the past, but is struggling with now.    These are also things that would be harder to see through a clouding lens.

So I sent an email.   I always have a plan, but I’m not a doctor and I’m not trained in all things eyes and basically I’m no expert.   I have observational information and a vague idea of what could possibly be the cause, but I need to engage our favorite eye doctors to have them confirm, make plans and take action.   And I need to do all of this by not crying wolf too often, or hopefully never.    It’s a fine line of being a forceful advocate for my daughter’s health and waiting for time to tell and let our doctor’s decisions play out.

This has been brewing for a while but specifically after seeing just how challenging this weekend was for my daughter camping out, it was time to send the email.   As an aside here, my daughter didn’t know this weekend was challenging, we knew it as adults who worried about her mostly the entire time because sometimes in unfamiliar environments, she just doesn’t know how much she can’t see.

Back to the email.   I sent it to our pediatric ophthalmologist.   She thought the concerns were significant enough to contact our retina surgeon in Detroit, who decided it would be good to move her EUA up to, “see if there is a treatable option”.  

So we’re off to Detroit on Monday.    I have no idea what type of good or bad or wait a while news will come out of it but we’ll know more then.

The Big Boy Update:  This morning at breakfast my son said, “I have green eyes and that means I’m sick and can’t go to school.”   My husband told him, “good try”.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter was supremely happy coming home from school today.   She and I stopped into the grocery store and she happily helped me select things and then assisted the check out person by putting things on the scale.   Then, no sooner than we’d walked into the door of the house, she turned into “Super Whiny Child” alternating every ten minutes or so with the “Crazy Crying Child” personality.    Food typically helps, but even today she just had to work it out on her own because nothing seemed to help.

The Toe May Live:  I’m not going to post another picture, what with all the, “I almost vomited!” messages I got after the last picture, but at this point I think I’m going to be able to keep the toe.   It’s not happy, but it’s getting better.