Vision Quest

Kirk has his appointment with the eye specialist on Wednesday morning. His regular ophthalmologist suggested we see this guy for a second opinion on if the glasses are fixing his strabismus or if he’ll need patching or surgery or something else. Being that it’s the University, it’s a teaching hospital and clinic and the first doctor we saw was a resident. She was really good with Kirk, running through all the various tests, but definitely seemed flustered with some of his refusal to cooperate. She brought another woman in who I thought must have been an instructor but it wasn’t clear. This second woman was fabulous. She took no guff from Kirk but was also cheerful, brusque but friendly. She whipped through the final couple of exams in no time. They did some really interesting stereoscopic tests that I assumed were for eye alignment.

It’s amazing how much I know about eye exams now considering I’ve only ever had one in my lifetime – outside of school checks – and have never needed corrective lenses. There’s so much more than just how far you can see. Depth and clarity and binocularity and it’s really a truly amazing discipline.

And of course I knew that there was no way Kirk was going to be able to avoid getting his eyes dilated. He hates that. It’s not just the eye drops themselves, though he really despises that process as well. He truly can’t stand the effect of having his pupils opened so wide. He complained about the exam lights blinding him even! Not that I blame him. It’s very trippy. He was extremely concerned, knowing we were going to the eye doctor, and had been freaking out about getting shots and “magic eye drops”. I assured him he would not be getting shots but kept my mouth shut on the other. I counseled him to let the doctor know right away that he didn’t want those things and sure enough, when they walked in he announced his preferences. Alas, he did not avoid getting eye drops.

There is, however, a lot more stuff to do when you’re on campus and have to kill time waiting for the drops to take effect.

Then we finally saw the doctor himself. He was amazing. I really, really liked him. He was great with Kirk and explained everything to us very clearly. Apparently the middle woman that was so fabulously nonsense-free is an orthoptist. They specialize in vision alignment. The U graduates one per year and there are only ten programs in the country. The doctor has three on staff. So it really makes sense for us to go there. The doctor explained that while to us it looks like the glasses are correcting his cross, it’s actually still 6 or 7 degrees off. It has to be a larger degree to be noticed by the naked eye and they consider it parallel when it’s down to about 3 degrees. So he’s getting there! Since the glasses do seem to be making a difference, he wanted to try a new prescription for Kirk. In two months then he’ll check to see if that’s helping enough.

Basically there are three options: the glasses will correct it completely, the glasses won’t correct it at all, the glasses will correct it partially. Our next steps will depend on which of those three things happens. I feel positive that we’re not being pushed towards surgery and that if it ends up being necessary, it will be because all other options were explored fully. In the meantime, I guess we’ll have to go to the glasses store this weekend…