Amblyopia---

This is a bit of a public service announcement for all of my fellow moms out in blog land. I know most of my readers are moms and I think this information can be very important.

Tanner was recently diagnosed with Amblyopia. This is commonly known as " lazy eye". Many of us may think that you would notice lazy eye but for Tanner this is how it unfolded....

Tanner had a preliminary vision screen in his Kindergarten classroom and when he did he was slotted to go to the nurse for a vision screen. When you get information from a 6 year old... this is what you get..."Mom and Dad I see different out of one eye then the other...like if I cover up one eye I see different then if I cover up the other eye" Tim and I were not sure where this all come from ( he did not mention the eye testing) So, next step 2 days later I recieve a call from the nurse indicating that he failed his eye testing. She explained to me that he cannot see out of his left eye....So off to the pediatrian and eventually the eye doctor and fast forward to where we are today. We are doing some patching and hoping that we will be able to get something going in his left eye. The Dr. believes he has some vision it is just that the brain has shut off messages from that eye because it has gone on for so long. As it stands right now Tanner cannot see through binoculars or a telescope or a view finder or see 3D or have any depth perception. I am sad it took so long to catch this but I am so happy that we caught it at all.



This had made both Tim and I realize how amazing our little guy truly is. He has become quite the hockey player he is being put with kids much bigger and older then him and he is skating great and scoring a number of times everytime he plays. As far as school he is doing great despite his vision. I am growing more concerned that when we think he is reading...he is in fact memorizing. At least now we know what to watch for and he is doing vision therapy ( patching and such) and he will also be wearing glasses. I am hoping this will all make a difference in his world.



My only message here is ....Take your kids to get thier vision checked by an eye doctor. This could have been caught as early as 6 months old. I never knew this. Because Tanner's "lazy" eye is not noticable by appearance it was missed.



The patching is hard work and he gets very upset and frustrated but we continue to try and pray.



I will post some pictures soon of how adorable Tanner looks in his new glasses. If they make as much of a difference in his vision as we hope it might change his whole world or at least the way he sees it.



Thanks for stoppin' in and checkin on us.



Much love,



Tammi and the boys