The White Scarf

There is an ongoing debate, discussion, perhaps a wondering about my daughter’s vision.   Is it improved?  Has it been dramatically changed with the cataract removal for the worse?   It’s infernally hard to find out from my daughter because she doesn’t tell us directly.   We have to go with observational evidence and feedback from the experts who can better interpret my daughter’s actions.

The Vision Impairment teacher has been concerned.  She’s said not only is my daughter’s vision worse, she’s highly frustrated by it and has broken down in tears and been resistant to working at school as a result.

The Orientation and Mobility teacher has said the opposite, indicating there has been an improvement in navigational capabilities and possibly more sighted input, even given the very incorrect sunglasses prescription we have at this time.

We got lucky and Dhruti, our play therapist, had a session this afternoon.  I’ll find out what she thinks when we have a chance to talk on my daughter’s level of frustration in comparison to possible improvement.    We also had Chelsea, our music therapist today and she told a different story altogether.

They’ve been playing a scarf game for months.   Today my daughter said, “I didn’t know we had a brown scarf!”   Then later she said, “when did you get a white scarf?”   As you might guess, there were no new scarves, but their colors were suddenly brighter and more discernible.   Chelsea said from her perspective she’s seeing all kinds of new things and her spatial orientation is much improved.

So hopefully some things are better, even though we’re still going through an adjustment period and in need of a correct refraction and glasses to match.

The Big Boy Update:  My son went off to overnight camp in the large forest beside our neighborhood this afternoon.   It’s something the kindergarten-aged children do every year.   Initially my son wasn’t that excited to go but after a conversation with dad last night, not only was he okay about going, he was calmly excited about it.    As he was about to leave he went over to his sister with some advice for while he was gone,  saying, “be a brave girl, Reese.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  In a conversation about balloons today my daughter inquired, “is it called floatium that goes up in balloons?”  I said it was helium and it went up because it was lighter than air.   She asked me next if there was another one that made the balloons go down.   Yes, I said there were other gases that were heavier than air but we didn’t typically put them in balloons because it wasn’t as much fun.