At his 9 month check-up (when he was actually 10 months old), I mentioned it to his pediatrician. She gave us some guidelines to go by with the glare for overhead light to make sure we were actually seeing the drifting. This confirmed we were. By 12 months old, the drifting happened more often and was more obvious.
So today, when we visited the ophthalmology clinic at Children's, they confirmed he has exotropia (a type of strabismus). It's a condition that affects the eye muscles and causes the vision to not be in the proper line. His right eye is in the second stage, which means it has moved beyond when he is tired, sick, or excited, and now occurs just on exam by the doctor. Also, his left eye is slightly affected and it's possible it might worsen like the right eye did.
So what does this mean?
Arrgghh... daily patching for 30-60 minutes per day for the next 6 weeks. Then a decision to be made about surgery. He wasn't too thrilled about this at first... but after about 10 minutes (and a big fat bottle) he got used to it!
Since the left eye is also showing signs of being affected, the patching probably won't give much improvement. But we're willing to give it a shot if there is any way to try and avoid another surgery! At this point, he'll probably need surgery within the next few months. If the condition isn't treated and gets worse, Leo will be at risk of "amblyopia" (loss of vision due to disuse). So of course we don't want to mess around with that.
So, please keep our Leo in your prayers. We would sure love a miracle to correct things for him!
Joyce
sweet squishy. I will be praying for you. We know that He works miracles everyday and we also know that there is nothing you cannot overcome with His hands guiding us. Love you baby boy!!
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