The patch-free zone! 5-20-10

Today was a monumental day in the Smith household. Today we took Daniel for his appointment with the ophthalmologist who pronounced that Daniel is officially now in the patch-free zone. Three years ago, we took him to the eye doctor for his regular 6-month check-up (because he has strabismus and wears a very strong prescription on his glasses. +6.0 on the left eye, and +6.75 on the right) and were told he had lost almost all of the sight in his right eye due to amblyopia. This began a journey of daily eye-patching the good eye to see if he could regain some sight in that eye. Some of it did, indeed, come back! In fact, today, with his glasses on, he's seeing at 20/50 out of that eye. Not great, but okay. We aren't going to patch anymore because at about age 8 or 9, the brain kindof sets the amount of eyesight we're going to have as permanent, and patching doesn't help anymore.

I'd love to tell you that we aren't patching anymore because his lazy eye issues are cured. That, however, would be a lie. It's more accurate to say that we got as much benefit out of patching as our DR felt we would. Since his last appointment in November, we've seen no further improvement, so it's time to put the eye patch away. Here's a pic of Daniel, looking highly irritated at his shutter-bug mom, wearing his UVA colors. This was taken about a year ago.

We also ordered his new glasses today. Same prescription, but his frames were bent and mangled pretty badly. It was just time. This isn't fabulous since we JUST replaced them at the end of last summer, his glasses being lost to a far-sighted fish somewhere out in the Atlantic Ocean. (You can read about that HERE if you like.) I probably could have gotten them repaired, but we really didn't want to deal with Walmart anymore because I wasn't satisfied with their service. I was highly shocked when they told me that they'd be ready by tomorrow, a far cry from the 3-4 weeks I'd had to wait when we were dealing with Wally-world. AND I got a great deal from VisionWorks in Charlottesville-- 2 for $99. Ours were actually 2 for $109, since he wanted one of the slightly more expensive frames, but I'm still VERY happy with the deal I got. Walmart usually ended up being aroun $80 for one pair.



Oh, and Emily- my oldest- was recently in an art show for her school and won first for painting. She sold her painting too to someone who was VERY happy to get it. Yay, Em! Here it is. I just thought I'd share it with y'all. Believe it or not, she did this on posterboard with acrylic paints. I was so proud of her!