In Which Lex Gets Glasses

Yesterday, I took Lex back to the eye doctor.  He still has a brown freckle in his blue eye.  And he still needs glasses.

He's old enough to do the letter chart now.  Yes, I focused on teaching Lex to recognize and name letters starting last spring for the sole purpose of taking him back to get glasses.  I mean, he had to learn them anyways, but I wanted his next eye exam to go smoothly.

He sat on my lap, and with his good eye he read the letter chart on the wall across the room by pointing to the correct matching letter on a sheet of paper we held.  They flashed up the letters one at a time, and they got smaller each time.  With his good eye, he could see until I was squinting to make out the tiny letters at the end of the room.  It was easy.  He was happy.  It was fun.  He called it "the pirate game" and declared that he liked to play.

Then we switched to his other eye.  And he got fussy, uncooperative and squirmy.  He threw the paper on the floor.  He tried to take "the pirate patch" off.  He complained.  He identified the first huge letter after much wrangling.  But he could not do the next one.  He can't see at all through that eye.

So he got eye drops to dilate his pupils and a fancy machine took a picture of his eye in order to get an accurate prescription.  He is -.25 in the good eye (which they normally don't even treat in kids, or even some adults) and -3.25 in the left eye.

After getting his prescription, the doctor fitted the appropriate lenses into a wire frame set of glasses.  We then set about redoing the eye chart.  First the good eye.  No problems.  Then the other one.  And it was the same fit.  I was a little taken aback at first.  I had assumed that just because we put the lens in front of the bad eye that Lex would be able to see out of it.  But that isn't the case.

The doctor explained to me that we see using not just our eyes, but our brain as well.  Basically the eyes provide information to our brain, and then our brain does the seeing.  Since Lex can see with one eye much better than the other, his brain has basically started ignoring all the information sent by the left eye.  So even though the information being sent by his left eye was now clear, his brain wouldn't use it.  He still couldn't "see" with that eye.  This also explains why he can see functionally now, even though his left eye is 20/150.

So right now we are going to get him glasses that he needs to wear all the time for about 10 weeks.  Then we are going back to the doctor to see if his brain has recognized that the signal is clear now and started to use his left eye to see.  If not, he may have to wear a patch over his good eye for a bit to force his brain to re-learn how to use his left eye.  And if his fits over the eye chart patch over his good eye are any indication, he is not going to like that.

I let Lex pick out whichever glasses he wanted.  The sales guy kept asking me what I wanted, and I kept redirecting him to ask Lex.  I figured that he should get to be as involved as possible so that he would wear them.  Lex told him he wanted black glasses, and in the end he picked out a pair of black Mickey Mouse frames.  They look great on him.  Lex was very sad that he didn't get to wear the test pair from the doctor's office home, because he didn't really understand that they had to make him a different pair. 

Last night when I was tucking him into bed, he said that he missed his new black glasses.  He should get them sometime next week.   Here's hoping he stays excited enough about them to actually wear them.