Wednesday, February 13, 2008

A [Rare] Moment of Serious...

I've been meaning to write this for a week now, and haven't found the time. Both boys had their check-up with the ophthalmologist last week, and the news was all good. Gabe's lazy eye has finally stabilized, and the doctor doesn't think his vision will get any worse than it is now. He's a good candidate for corrective surgery when he's done growing, and it looks like we could be done patching for good. This thrills us all! Some of you may remember a couple of years back when he broke his nose running into a light pole, which he didn't see coming because of the patch over one eye!

Timothy, who now knows all his letters, was reading 20/100 with each eye. For those of you who don't eat, sleep and breath eyes, this means that he sees as well or better than many near-sighted people see without their glasses or contacts. While his vision isn't expected to improve much more than this, we're pretty happy for our "blind" child to be seeing this well. Nearly three years ago, we were told we would be lucky if he had light/dark differentiation, so this is nothing short of miraculous. The doctor is amazed. Kids with occular albanism rarely reach this level of of vision. Timothy's life will never be perfectly "normal". He probably won't drive a car or play on his high school sports teams. But he also won't attend a school for the blind or need help navigating outside of his home. We're more thankful than we can say for how far he's come in his short life. God has blessed us. Again.

There, serious moment over. Please put away your hankies and prepare for the return of silliness.

3 comments:

Moi said...

That's fantastic! I'm glad they're both doing better than expected. :) Who knows, by the time they're both of driving age maybe there'll be some super-cure or fix that'll allow them both to do whatever they want... not that you may want to tell them that. Can glasses help Timothy at all?

(Random plug for an awesome website I recently used: zennioptical.com has cheaaaaap glasses, even for expired prescriptions. I know, i know, bad to use expired, but good if you're a child or just prone to breaking your glasses all the time.)

Lista said...

Arg, last time I tried to reply my computer crashed! There's no restriction on Gabe driving (except my resulting heart-attacks). He's just far-sighted. Glasses won't help Timothy since his vision is messed up on a cellular level. No, he didn't go blind from talking on my cell phone! His cells are missing their pigment.

I'll have to check out that website to see if they can do goggles/sports glasses. Gabe really needs some, and they're SO expensive!

The Almighty Betherson "Ninja" said...

oh my goodness this is the best news i've heard in quite some time!!!!
seriously! i'm so excited!

btw, we had a pxt in last week that had rotary nystagmus, and it was the coolest/strangest thing i'd ever seen. and her vision is totally unaffected by it! crazy!