About That Pressure

I had two people contact me asking, “hey, weren’t you trying to find out about eye pressure yesterday?   Wasn’t there an appointment?  We didn’t hear on the blog.”   So oops, yeah, I didn’t write about it.   It was one of those complicated days in which <spoiler alert> we learned very little about my daughter’s vision while having an interesting day in another direction with bring your parents to school day.   Thanks for the reminder that I’m not (as I like to envision) writing only to myself here and that people sometimes tune in and check up on us.

My daughter did have an appointment with her pediatric ophthalmologist yesterday and we did learn some things but on the whole it was more of a, “let’s wait and see” kind of appointment in the end.   What we had done since learning from our play therapist on Thursday was to leave my daughter alone about anything vision-related.   This means giving her help always in finding things by describing where something is, not saying, “can you see the fork, it’s near you”.   It means taking as much stress off her as possible when it comes to her vision.  

I saw her teachers on Friday morning and they understood, said it made sense and will move forward with the same plan.    Then, after visiting my daughter in her classroom the first thing in the morning and seeing her show us her work, we dosed her with a good amount of Benadryl so she’d be more relaxed for the eye appointment.  

We came back an hour-and-a-half later to get her and she was in a calm but good mood.   She was happy and glad to see the doctor but as soon as discussion about getting a pressure reading (which doesn’t touch the eye and isn’t painful) the screaming and crying began.   How Dr. Prakalapakorn got even a reasonable look into her eyes is beyond me, but lights completely off and my daughter playing with a light-up spinning toy and her doctor could apparently see something, enough to say her eye was in a calm, clear state.

We talked to her about the possibility my daughter was seeing some, but was under a large amount of stress to prove she could see and had potentially shut down.  Her doctor didn’t think her pressure had dropped dramatically from a tactile touch but thought an ultrasound might help (if my daughter would tolerate it).   Tolerate it was the question.  

It took two doctors and some yelling from my daughter and some cajoling from us with the promise of a lollipop and the ultrasound was completed.   It’s hard to tell—trust me, I saw the ultrasound, it was hard to tell anything.   But there did seem to be a layer of something that wasn’t dense enough to be retina.   The thought is it’s likely the injected steroid they put into her eye that hasn’t permeated out yet.   It may have settled and is obstructing some of her vision.   We’ll know more when we see Dr. Trese on June 6th.

Today was good and while my daughter will run into things as large as a car, she seems to be able to do well with other things.   My mother suggested she look at herself in the mirror to see her new haircut.   She hadn’t done this before and while we don’t know what she could see, she was happy with what she saw.

The Big Boy Update:  My son to dad, “we need to replace mommy.”  Dad, “why?”  My son, “because she talks too much and it wastes time.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  While swinging on the swings together my daughter told me, “I farted sixty times yesterday.”