The eyes have it

Here's another brag about our amazing Natalie.  Yesterday she saw her ophthalmologist for the first time in about six months (we'd planned for her to go under anesthesia earlier this year for ear tubes and eye pressure check, but when the ENT decided to see if she had outgrown the need for ear tubes, the ophthalmologist also delayed his check).

So it was time to check her glasses prescription to see if her eyes had grown more nearsighted...and the doctor also said, "I'm tempted to try to check her pressure here in the office."  I immediately agreed that we should try, but I would have bet good money that we would not be successful.

In case you don't know how eye pressure is checked, the doctor uses something that looks like a ball-point pen, and actually barely touches the eye ball to measure the pressure.  You can imagine how difficult this would be for anyone to sit still for, much more so a child, and hugely more so a special needs child.

First the doctor put eye drops in Natalie's eyes to numb her eyes so she wouldn't feel anything.  Natalie was sitting in my lap, and she had Jesse in her lap.  Then, while Natalie was watching the television in front of her (which she couldn't see, of course, since she didn't have her glasses on) the doctor took her eye pressure readings.  She resisted mildly the first time, but then she settled down and he got three readings from each eye!

I was amazed!  Whoo hoo!  We don't have to go under anesthesia any more to check her eye pressures!  I know that she's become so used to eye drops in her eyes every night that she was able to tolerate his exam of her.

So her eye pressures ranged from 18-21 in each eye.  This is not bad, but it's not good either, according to the doctor.  He feels certain she doesn't have full-blown congenital glaucoma (eye pressure in the 30-60 range), but while these eye pressure readings are normal for adults, they are a little high for children (children are usually in the 10-15 range.  And as we have discussed before, she has large optic nerves and large cups on her optic nerves, which generally are signs of glaucoma...but she doesn't have the super high pressures of glaucoma.

Thankfully, her eyes have NOT become more nearsighted (praise God!)  The doctor wants us to start giving eye drops in the morning as well as the evening (you remember how much she loves those drops!) and he wants her to see another glaucoma specialist in Los Angeles, to see if that doctor has anything to add to Natalie's eye care.

Even though Natalie's eye issues are not completely diagnosed, we're thankful for what she has: steady glasses prescription over the past six months and now eye pressures measured in the office!  More eye drops, well, ok, we'll try to get Natalie used to that.