Still no pictures...but at least there is an update!

I really really intended to put pic's up after the last post - we've been a little busy - and I've been exhausted...I'm not complaining - I just pregnant (whooohooooooo!!!!!) so I've had the first trimester tiredness that plagues us poor poor pregnant folk (haha!). So yes - for those of you that don't know already - we're having another baby (is Jack still a baby?) and we're due on April 17....5 days after Jack's 2nd birthday. Ian is hoping their b-days aren't super close together but I don't really know what I can do about that so we'll see what happens.

So - update on Jack's little googlie eye (aka 'lazy eye'). We finally saw the pediatric ophthalmologist (yes - that's how you spell it...) and she confirmed as we knew that Jack has a lazy eye. But, as a surprise to us, Jack isn't even using his right eye at all to see. I guess that goes hand and hand with the lazy eye thing. So - if an adult were to develop a lazy eye we would get double vision but as a child under the age of 3-5 their brain just stops using the eye because it's not working right. So just to be clear - Jack is not seeing out of his right eye at all - he's not blind - he's just not using it. Good news is that we can indeed train the brain to start using that eye again, it will just take some work.

So first step is to get him glasses. Yup - glasses! He will be wearing the glasses that make his eyes look huge and the idea is that the glasses will help his eye to turn back properly. Hopefully that works. The doc said that we will know within a month if that is going to fix the turn or not. Then - once we have corrected the turn as much as possible we will work on correcting his vision - which means a patch for his left eye. We will patch his 'good' eye to force his brain to start using his 'bad' (right) eye. Again - hopefully that works. The doc seemed to indicate that the use of glasses then a patch have pretty good success rate. She said we would know the status of the turn and the vision probably by Xmas but I think she also said up to 6 months (I really should have be writing stuff down...but we will have another appointment in a month so I can confirm any outstanding issues then).

So - if after all that there is still a 'residual turn' - which means that his eye still turns a bit even though the glasses have mostly corrected it - then we'll be looking to have surgery to correct the rest of the turn. But they don't like to do the surgery until they are confident the vision has been corrected as much as possible - the doc said the surgery has a higher success rate if the vision has already been corrected (think of it this way...if they do the surgery but his brain still isn't using the eye then his eye will just start to turn again because there is no brain control of it - but if his brain understands that it has to use that eye there will be a better chance that his eye will stay pointed in the proper direction and not turn in).

She said he'll probably be in the glasses for the turn for a few years (I took it to mean until age 3-5) but that it's almost a definite that he'll have to wear glasses until the end of elementary school for sure. (I should probably clarify that I'm talking about 2 different 'glasses'. The ones he needs immediately and will probably wear for the next few years will be the ones that make his eyes look big...they are more to fix the eye not so much about the vision - but the ones he'd be wearing in school would be more like vision correcting glasses that the rest of us wear...so he won't be wearing the big coke bottle glasses forever).

I'm a little disappointed at the amount of 'work' we have to do to correct this - I was more prepared just to hear her said he needed surgery and whamo blamo we'd be done with it. So we're concerned about him wearing glasses, the inconvenience for him, fixing them, trying to make him keep them on, etc., - but the doc was good - she said that really we (okay - I) were really just putting our own feelings on the issue and that he won't care or remember going through this and that at the end of the day he'd be happier being able to see than not. She obviously makes a good point. So hopefully all goes well. I'll post a pic of him with glasses once we get them. I'm hoping he's as cute as the Jerry Maguire kid...