Nathan saw the retina specialist again earlier this month and it appears everything is well.
It wasn’t Easy to successfully complete this appointment. Charlie went with me to assist in the dilating process, after the unsuccessful attempt we had with his ophthalmologist last fall.
It still took 15 minutes, lots of bribery and about 4.5 scratches on dad.
The conclusion? He has one lisch nodule in his left eye at 3 o’clock. That’s strictly caused by the NF and should not be the cause of his strabismus.
When Nathan first started wearing glasses, he loved them. They were clearly helping. Sometimes around September-October, he starting fighting us on them and pushing them down on his nose so he could look over the top. We used our parenting instinct and just stopped.
We were able to get a consistent exam. 20/30 in his right eye and 20/40 in his left (strabismus) eye. It’s 20/50 with his glasses.
The eye is constantly crossed. The glasses obviously didn’t help and there was no improvement when we patched.
Our next step is probably surgery and sooner rather than later so he can develop his 3D vision.
I’m getting quite a few suggestions to look into vision therapy so I plan to make an appointment with his pediatrician and get his point of view. We need to see him anyways to get a health clearance before the surgery.
So that’s where we are.
I work for a family vision practice in California that does vision therapy with wonderful success with children and adults. Please look for an Optometrist’s office who see a lot of children and do VT. A website that will help is http://www.Pavevision.org. You can also look at our practice’s website FVCOptometry.com. We have heard from quite a few parents through the years that Ophthalmologists aren’t big supporters of VT. Our VT patients come for an hour once a week and the ones who have the greatest success are those who “DO THEIR HOMEWORK” each day – the eye and the brain have to be re/trained and it takes more than an hour a week with the therapist.
My husband and I are currently doing our own research on vision therapy. We haven’t scheduled any surgeries yet!
In May 2015 I woke with my eyes looking different. I didn’t really look in the mirror, I was in a hurry to get to physical therapy. I saw my therapist who immediately noticed it and made a same day appointment in Opthalmology. Turns out at almost 26 I developed strabismus. My eyes are finally to the point were I can see without blurriness or double vision and they are straight. I have been through patching, getting different glasses, surgery they had to do both eyes even though only one was affected, and Botox injections. Good luck, it will all work out it just takes time.
Elena
Thank you Elena! I’m sorry you had to go through all that as an adult.