Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Patching Progress for Our Pirate Princess (Say that 3 times fast!)

There is excellent progress to report due to Katie's eye patching. To recap her situation, Katie's left eye is 20/80 corrected to 20/20 and her right eye is 20/200 and had been corrected to 20/60 but had recently started deteriorating to 20/80. The Opthamologist prescribed patching the good eye to force the bad eye to start working a little harder. After 7 weeks of patching we have brought the right eye to a corrected 20/60 and 20/40 on one line of vision. Whooohoooo!

The Doctor has asked us to up the amount of patching from 6 hours a day to 7-8 hours a day. He was very happy with the results and wants to get a greater correction. We have many months of patching to go (if not more) and there will be some lens prescription tweaking along the way as well. We are looking to get it to it's best point and then plateau for awhile until we are able to wean her from the patch.

Katie has been such a trooper. She asks us periodically if she has to still wear it but she never complains about it. It is hard for us because we notice that her bubbly personality fades a bit while she has it on and she withdraws. Who can blame her? No one at all! It is such a disorienting feeling to have one eye patched and it is very unpleasant. Try it yourself to see by patching one of your eyes. It really does suck and hers is worse as it is her bad eye that is uncovered so she cannot see very well out of that eye either. She is such a mature girl for her age and we are so proud of her. We also know that we are working towards a good end and are so excited and happy with the results so far!

Here are a few recent pics of our Pirate Princess!

Our Pirate Princess


Close up activities are very good to strengthen the eye during the patching. Katie loves puzzles so this has been a good way to get the job done.


Cutie pie


They were watching a show about how Tootsie Rolls are made....they are obviously really into this show :-)


Katie loves her her brother so much and the feeling is quite mutual. I know Katie looks quite solemn in these pics, which is what I was trying to explain in the post. She withdraws with it on.

5 comments:

Candy said...

This is great news!

Kelley said...

What a little trooper she is! You have to admire that she wears it well without much complaint.

Minouche said...

Katie, you are the most beautiful Pirate Princess ever!! :O))) You're such a good and sweet girl, and is doing great with using your patch as the doctor recommends. I am sure that soon your eyes will be all better!

Huge princess squeezy hugs,

Minouche

Mary said...

She is such a good sport about the whole patching thing, bless her heart! Hopefully it won't have to go on too much longer.
Love the photo of the kiddos chillin' out!

Midway Cottage said...

Hey Lori! Where do you get those great patches? We just get boring flesh colored ones. Maybe Eli will be more excited about wearing a band-aid like, decorated patch??!!