Tuesday 29 January 2013

What I Know About Patching So Far...

1.  It sucks!!

2.  Patching means that you are putting a patch over a child's 'good eye' to force the 'bad eye' to work.  Patching is to encourage the eye/brain connection that has already been 'switched off' to 'switch back on again'.

3.  Patching started after M's cataract removal surgery when she was wearing her contact.  She was required to wear her patch for all waking hours of the day except the hour before bed.  She is still required to do this amount of patching each day.

4.  The first 2 days of patching M couldn't see a thing out of her eye that wasn't patched.  She sat on the floor and cried, or was held in my arms and cried.  She cried all day for 2 days because she couldn't see.  It was horrible.

5.  Eventually she learned that she could rip her patch off.  Once she learned she could rip it off, she made a habit out of it.

6.  Every time M rips her patch off she rips her skin off.

7.  Applying Calamine lotion to the skin that is going to come into contact with the patch adhesive works pretty well.

8.  Applying Cavilon to the skin where the patch adhesive comes into contact with her skin helps too.

9.  I think that the patching is working to develop the sight in her eye that had the cataract.  A few days into patching she ran into the couch while crawling.  Now she can maneouvre around our house avoiding most obstacles, and can even find smaller objects on the floor.  She can also find her way around new places.


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