The story of a wonky eye

I was overwhelmed with the kind  response to our happy news that Ruby's brain signal test was completely normal.  

Thank you so much dear friends and family for all your concern for our baby girl. 

 Here is her story

We first noticed Ruby's left eye was slightly odd when she was quite small, it just did not look right and sometimes seemed to move around unable to focus properly.  Following her one year  old health check the health visitor  referred her to the orthoptic department at the local hospital.  She was diagnosed with strabismus amblyopia which in easy to understand words is a lazy eye with an outward  squint. 

There started our far too intimate relationship with the out patients department at the local hospital.  Such a miserable place to be; the vastly overheated waiting area is  a bizarre mix of very frail old people, children with varying thickness of glasses and very harassed parents.  The plastic guide dog has  long since stopped providing entertainment, the jigsaw pieces, already few, are rapidly diminishing and the odd collection of books do nothing to fill our always long waiting time.  

However these monthly visits have been a breeze compared to enticing a small child into wearing her patch. The idea is that her good eye is covered forcing her weak eye to learn how to see.  Obviously the consultant who rather patronisingly reminded us she would be blind in that eye if we did not make her wear it  has never had to  actually enforce  patching  with a toddler.  We have tried and tried and thought of a new strategy and tried again.

We have patched:

as a baby

whilst crafting

in the woods, with a dummy bribe!

the rest of the family (no success!)

in the garden

on a bike  (removing it!)

in her christmas dress

We have prayed many times and asked our healing God to make her sight right.

All of these strategies, including patching her favourite dolls and wearing arm bands  so she could not physically remove the patch have not proved much success.  Frustratingly she will wear the patch for other people, wearing it all day with a child carer but removing it as soon as she is collected.    

Following our last visit there was some concern that she might not actually have potential to see and we were sent to a larger hospital (with a much more friendly outpatients waiting area) for tests to see the ability of her brain to actually process  visual signals.

She was wired up and firmly sat on my lap with a whole variety of treats at the ready, in front of the television screen.  A video (remember those?) was put in the machine and at various points   coloured dots go across the screen, the wires attached to her head in different places record her responses to them.  These are then analysed for the results.

We have just had the happy news that her   brain is working correctly and  her problem is only a lazy eye, nothing more sinister.  

What an overwhelmingly amazing relief!

She will still need a small operation to correct the squint but there is no rush for that, forcing the weaker eye to work is a much higher priority as if not achieved by the age of seven then it is not going to be possible. The consultant suggested we use drops of Atropine in her good eye which will blur the vision forcing her weak eye to learn to see. 

It can only be easier than the patching trial.

Has anyone had any experience of using these drops or

 got any useful lazy eye advice?