Eye Cee Ewe

Kirk had another eye appointment on Friday. He was…less well behaved than the first time. The optometrist’s assistant asked if he knew letters and started out showing him letters. He named them clearly for a while and then started in with the lunatic babbling. I hate when he does that. He totally sounds like Billy Madison. It’s sort of a corollary to him acting extra weird around kids he doesn’t know well. He is so smart and well spoken at home but then when there are adults he doesn’t know well he just switches into gibberish. He thinks it’s funny of course and I just want to bash my head against the wall. So she started showing him pictures instead of letters and he was mildly more clear with his responses, but only up to a point. I honestly don’t know how she was able to glean anything from it at all.

And then it was time for the eye drops. I knew it was going to be a problem. I mean, Kirk remembered them vividly from his first appointment. His father took him to his second appointment but that was just a muscle check so no dilation necessary. I actually had to hold him arms down so she could get the drops in his eyes. It was pretty ridiculous.

The nice thing is that then you have to wait a while for the drops to take effect and that break really helped to reset Kirk’s behavior. We played in both of the waiting rooms at the clinic so he could check out the varying toys. He even made friends with a couple of other kids in for whatever check-ups that day. So by the time he was seen by the actual doctor himself, he was reasonably cooperative.

The doctor wants Kirk to see a specialist. A specialist in eye surgery. I think I did a good job of not freaking out but also not being meek. I wanted to make sure that by seeing a specialist we weren’t passively agreeing to any surgery without further discussion. As I understand it, Kirk’s got a more unusual form of the strabismus than is typical for a kid. His vision in his right eye is equal to the vision in his left eye. They are both farsighted the same amount. So when he’s wearing his glasses, the right eye is straight. However, the muscle in the right eye is still weaker so it hasn’t been corrected by the workout of wearing glasses. In this instance that means that giving him an eye patch, to force the right eye to work overtime, wouldn’t actually make a difference because his sight isn’t the issue. (I wonder if this would work? Heh.) The doctor doesn’t know if this is something that Kirk will just grow out of and that’s why he wants a second opinion. I guess that makes sense, though I’m still completely freaked by the idea of my child needing surgery. But it’ll take a while before we find out since the specialist likely won’t be able to get us in for many months. In the meantime, Kirk’s glasses prescription remains the same and no other changes need to take place so that’s good.