Patching

I took Kirstie to the eye doctor last week.  She's been a bizillion times so you think she'd be used to it.  But no, there were tears and anxiety galore, poor girl.  To make it worse, this was her annual appointment where they have to dialate her eyes.  So not only do we have to wait for that, she can't see.  And she was so worried about getting the letters wrong during the eye exam.  BUT, everything turned out ok. She found some boys to play with while we waited, did her best with the letters, hardly complained about her blurry vision, and was brave for the doctors (yes, plural-- she has to see the regular opthamoligist as well as a muscle specialist.)  The downside of the visit is that her left eye, which has always been the weaker one, didn't do as well with this visit.  She used to see 20/25, but this visit it was 20/40.  So, we're back to patching the eye 2 hours each day.  We'll go back in 8 weeks to see if it's improved any.  The dr was optimistic.  He said that once an eye has been strengthened before, it doesn't take too long to get it back in shape.  (Really, not back in shape but you know what I mean.)

We try to do the patching when we're home for long stretches of time-- usually during piano lessons/dinner.  I don't want her to have to wear it out and about and have people and kids looking at her funny if we can avoid it.  She's good at wearing the patch and I want it to stay that way.  She hardly complains, but instead tells me that she knows that her eye is getting stronger.  Yesterday I made the mistake of setting a timer for two hours so that she'd know how much longer she needed to wear it (so she's stop asking me.)  But those two hours d-r-a-g-g-e-d on because she just sat and watched the timer.  We won't be doing that again!

I'm proud of her for being so good about wearing the patch-- yet again.  I think this is round 3.  Hopefully we get good results from it!