This year it was no different, and I basically was dismissive to the school nurse. I really didn't want to take Regan for the proffessional opinion when I knew it was going to be virtually no change yet again....but a dent in my pocket nonetheless.
But I caved....
And vented my frustration to the doctor that either Regan is testing badly with the school eye exam or we really were way off with her numbers. She just looked at me a funny, and said "Does the school know that she is pretty blind in her right eye due to her prematurity and retinopathy at birth?"
No
and I didn't know that either.....
Why is it something that has basically benn with her since birth and in all of her medical charts probably hidden in some obscure medical jargon had never been explained to me....or written out to the school in her file. It is crazy to me that at fourteen years old I learn something so completely new about my child, and one that really can't be fixed.
She overcompensates with her left eye which really works beautifully, and her right eye is a disaster. Boy does that clear up a lot with her ability to focus.
Well now I know and so does the school, and once again her prescription chnaged just slightly, but the opthmologist assured me the glasses she was wearing were just fine, but she would write me a prescription for me to get a current back up pair if I wished.
3 comments:
My mom very promptly went all "mother bear" on my school when I was little. No school eye exam for me. She thought maybe I'd cry I guess.
I couldn't read right, when I was learning to read at 6 I would get to the end of a line instead of going 1 down, I'd go 4. So she took me to a developmental optometrist, which I would recommend. Turned out that I can see out of both my eyes just fine, just not at the same time. There is nothing wrong with my actual eyeballs, it's the connection between the brain and the eyes that got screwed. I'm under the impression that this is pretty common with CP.
When you go to an eye dr they cover 1 eye and do one at a time, so that, I guess you can say, switches my right eye on to get the right reading on it. Like Regan I also only really use my left eye, I'm left dominant eye, hand, leg, all the way up and down.
Anyway, the difference between that and what the school does (and the DMV) is that they put you in this thing where both eyes are open and supposed to coordinate. Because of the way the gizmos are set up I can see the 4 letters for the left eye, the 4 in the middle, but the area for the right eye is just blank white space. DMV told me I'm completely blind in my right eye, which clearly I am not. What I learned from a trained rehab specialist during an eval is that you can fiddle with the gizmos so that my right eye will "turn on" and all of a sudden the area on the left is blank white and the letters on the right "magically" appear. But it's just not worth that kind of effort with the school.
Wow, I wonder why the eye doctor never conveyed that info to you!
I'm ever so appalled , how could they not have told you long ago about Regans eye problem , it certainly has come up at least after
each excamen at school and susequently at the eyedoctor ,even though your friend Cheryl explains it beautyfully............ there has been a huge communication gap trough all this many years
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