Tam
Don't rush into surgery!
This is my story - it has a great ending:
It was obvious our son had a lazy eye which he was not going to simply outgrow by the time he was 18 months old. The degree of squint was pretty severe.
We were referred to the hospital eye clinic where a woman attempted to assess his eyes using completely inappropriate 'patient skills' for an 18 month old, shrieked at him, waved cuddly toys in his face, put a card with a picture 3 inches from his face and demanded 'what is it?' then tried to manouver his head into a contraption. When our son objected she said she couldn't assess him unless he would behave!
Once I persuaded her to back off and calm down a bit, I managed to get our son to cooperate by using gentle explanation and play and she was able to get her assessment. Her verdict: 'Your son is virtually blind in one eye - sufficiently so that he could be classed visually impaired. He does not have and will never have stereoscopic vision. His depth perception will be impaired and he will never be able to do things requiring good hand - eye cooperation such as bat a ball, catch a ball, kick a ball, hit a target etc. He will need an operation - probably several operations before he reaches maturity (to correct the squint) and he will have to wear an eye patch over his good eye at least 8 hours a day.
When I recovered from my upset and shock I did some research. Armed with this research we attended our appointment with the consultant who carried out the test with the eye drops and confirmed what the nasty woman at the first appointment had said. He also confirmed that the operations would NOT correct or attempt to correct our son's sight, they were merely for cosmetic effect - to make the eye appear straight. To the consultant's disapproval we turned down the surgery point blank - why would we subject a baby to general anaesthetic purely for aesthetic purposes?
Back for another appointment with 'nasty woman' and I shared my research with her - all from latest university research in the field of behavioural optometry. The research said that it was possible to correct the degree of a squint AND improve vision in the eye through specific eye exercises (using patches and both eyes) and that continuous patching / surgery was unnecessary. Nasty woman laughed at me and pointed to all her old, dusty books on the shelf, saying 'are you questioning my years of knowledge and experience?' I replied that not only was I doing just that, I was also removing our son from the care of this hospital. Chew on that, you old bat!
Eventually, after more research we made an appointment at 'The children's opticians' in Cardiff who it seemed were making great headways with behavioural optometry. Our son was by now aged 4. What a difference! Our son was assessed in a large, bright, comfy room full of interesting toys. The Optometrist got down on the floor with him and was crawling round the room cleverly using things like torches on walls and ribbons on the floor to assess his eyes and his ability to follow / track. Her assessment was that yes, he had a very deep squint and his eye had practically switched itself off in order to improve his vision by using just the other eye, BUT improvement was possible. She also prescribed him some glasses - clear glass for one eye and a really thick lens in the other and gave us specific eye exercises to do.
In the years that followed, we worked (played!) with the eye exercises we were given and invented a few ourselves. Our son only wore a patch when we were doing the exercises and the last few exercises each session were done with both eyes together (to encourage them to work together). Each time his eyes were tested (at the local opticians now) they were amazed! In the first year his sight in his bad eye improved by 3 lines on the chart - another 6 months added another 3 lines. To add to this his school photo each year showed the squint becoming less and less noticeable.
Now he is eleven years old, no longer wears glasses, has better than average peripheral vision in both eyes, is captain of his school and county rugby teams and also plays cricket for his town U11s. He has been ear-marked as an outstanding sportsman and has recently won a generous sports scholarship to a great school.
His eyes are completely straight.
Don't rush into surgery!
The boss came in after a while and tried to passify Alfie and have a look and he was brilliant! He couldn't get to see exactly what he wanted but he thinks as things stand from what he has seen, there is a 66% chance Alfie has to have an operation. But he wants to see him in June again in the hope that Alfie will be a little older and therefore understand a little bit more that they are not trying to hurt him and he can follow simple instructions, so that we know exactly what Alfie will need doing.
