4 Weeks Gone By

M had another check up with her surgeon and optometrist yesterday.  This was her routine check-up that has been happening every 4 weeks.

All things seem to be fine, and we are to continue doing what we are doing.  This exam, and the last, seem to suggest that M is developing more vision at further distances.  She is able to see large objects at further and further distances.  Her contact still offers her clear focused vision within a few feet from herself, but this distance vision is still developing apparently.

I had a discussion with the optometrist about how M acts when she is places.  She is always racing everywhere to get close to whatever she hears or wants to explore; which results in a darting M racing from place to place everywhere we go.  This is not very conducive to most places I would like to visit...  This apparently is normal, and can be expected, and will be the way it is until it is deemed that the majority of her learning is no longer taking place within her first few feet.  When this happens the contact strength will change, to change the focus point to a farther distance, and glasses will be used for closer vision needs.

We are continuing to patch everyday all day.  Full-time patching continues!

M's next appointment will be in 5 weeks from now.

A Cold

M seemed a little extra miserable on Friday and then was definitely sick by Friday night with a runny nose and congestion.  I'm not sure if it's because she wears the contact everyday, or if this is just how she was made, but when she gets a congestion type cold she always seems to get an infected eye in that contact wearing eye.

So Saturday, and now Sunday, have been contact and patch free days.  Her eye is just so red, watery, and irritated, that there's no point in suffering through what I would imagine would be great discomfort when wearing a contact.  We've been through this before with her a few times.  If the cold is bad enough, it always affects that eye, but at least now we know this is what happens with her.  The first time it happened it was a month after her cataract removal surgery (Christmas Eve day), and I hadn't discussed with her surgeon what to do should we think the eye had an infection (because M was seeing him so frequently I hadn't thought there was a need...). So in hopes of not having to go in on Christmas Day, I took M to the emergency at the Children's Hospital, where she had had the surgery, and tried to have someone look at her.  They of course, heard the words 'eye surgery' and immediately contacted a few people and got me an appointment at the Eye Institute the next day.

Today she's looking better, and I suspect tomorrow will be the day we return to contacts and patching again.

Wanted: One Custom Contact!

We lost a contact a few days ago... This is the second custom contact that has been lost since we started this process.

Luckily, I had just ordered a spare, since we had been using this contact for a while, and it fits pretty well.

Now M is using what was the spare, and I'm thinking I should order another - this time for a real spare, a spare contact that actually remains a spare for more than 2 days before being called up!

On the bright side, because it's a new contact, it is so much clearer in appearance, less cloudy, and much easier to handle when getting it in and out of M's eye.

M had her cataract removal surgery on November 23, 2012.  Since then we have needed 3 custom contacts, which means we have paid $525 for contacts thus far.  If I order another as a spare, that'll be up to $700.  We've been at this for almost 6 months, and I'm of course hoping custom contacts manage to last longer, get lost less frequently, or get found easily when lost!  In the world of babies wearing custom contacts, M's number is still pretty good.

Riding in the Car

M has been notorious for ripping her patch off when strapped into her car seat.  I used to buckle her in and the patch would be ripped off before I could get the car out of the driveway.  When we were deep in this problem the weather was colder and she needed to be wearing a light coat in the car, so I had had her wearing a coat that had hands that folder over.  That solved the problem for that time of year, and as the weather has been getting warmer outside, I knew that that coat solution was coming to an end.

So it's warm now!  Very warm for the past week, and it has been shorts and t-shirt weather, definitely not fleece coat with mittens kind of weather.  M has been in her car seat for a variety of length of trips, with no mitts, and she has not yet attempted to rip off her patch!  Now I just buckle her in, she plays, or naps, and doesn't seem to recognize the opportunity to free her second eye.  Hopefully this trend will continue!

Spare Contact

M has been wearing the same contact now for a long time (or at least it seems like a long time).  Again, we've only been doing this whole contact, patching, cataract thing for just over 5 months now, so it can't really be that long...

Anyway, the fitting seems to be good with this contact, and it rarely falls out or floats around in her eye.  So I ordered a spare.  I hadn't previously ordered any spares, because we hadn't had a contact that I would want a duplicate of.  This way should we lose the contact, we will have an immediate replacement.

So far in the world of contacts we have invested, including this recent spare, $525.  Which means we've had 3 so far.  We've had a few others that were traded in when we trying to get the right fit.  Out of the ones that fit right, the first one we lost, the second one we are currently  using daily, and the third is a spare for when that second contact bites the dust!

Pushing the Patching

At M's last appointment with her surgeon, the lady asked when are we patching.  I gave her general hours that we patch from the morning until night.  And she always replies - ok.  Like a non-judgmental 'ok'.  She doesn't say that it's a great amount of time to patch, we should do more, that we and M are doing a good job; she just says 'ok' all cheery like.

I think the attempt is being made to be non-judgmental without encouraging us to do less patching, or scolding us for not doing enough patching.

But I have a hard time with silence, and hearing an 'ok' from someone who I know is thinking in her head - we're doing a good job, or they could be patching more.

So... I try to fill the space.  I said I thought we were doing a good job, I have been thinking I could probably add an extra 30 minutes to the end of every day but it's a really hard time of day.  The 2 kids are super hungry and therefore usually quite angry, my husband isn't home from work, and I'm working on making supper usually with 1 or 2 kids crying around me, being held, or throwing some sort of tantrum in the middle of the kitchen floor.  Let me answer the question you may be thinking to yourself - yes, I've tried feeding them earlier or have attempted to give them snacks.  But M in particular is only willing to accept supper at this point.

So since this appointment, where I was 'not judged' by the lady we see, I have been working super hard to get supper ready 30 minutes earlier for M to eat, and then we all eat when my husband gets home from work just as M is finishing.  This most days, gets us another 30-45 minutes more of patching.

So by the time I left the office at the appointment I had talked myself into doing this new schedule, because I apparently was feeling guilty for not patching this extra time.  I told the lady that I had to weigh my quality of life against an extra 30 minutes of patching, and well quality of life had been winning.  From the one-sided conversation I had with this lady, simply as a result of her asking me how long M was patching, I figured I must be suffering from some internal guilt.

So with a few changes, a little push from my conversation basically with myself to the lady, and patience, we have lengthened M's patching day by about 30-45 minutes everyday.  We are patching full days everyday, but now each day is just a tiny bit longer.  Instead of her having 1.5 hours of no patching at night, it's now closer to just the hour we were supposed to be having her unpatched at the end of the day.

Sand...

M at the park!

Except she flung sand and must have gotten some in her eye.  She  was rubbing her eye, and it quickly became red and irritated, and a little puffy.  I tried eye drop after eye drop to get some sand out (not that I could see any but figured it must be in there), and managed to get her home, fed, and put down for a nap, still with the contact in and patch on.  I was trying everything to keep the contact in and patch on...

I was hoping the nap would make it better?!

She woke up from her nap, eye still definitely irritated, so I had to remove her contact, and thus remove the patch.  She ended up with a fun day at the park, an irritated eye, and a shorter patching day...  A day like this makes me think I should get good at putting the contact in her eye by myself; then I could have taken it out, cleaned it, and put it back in and not lost patching time.  Soon!  I might work on that...