Our Beautiful Trooper

I'm hesitant to share this, because I'm not one to get very personal on my blog. However, I decided to just so you know what's going on with us and maybe to give someone hope who is going through the same thing.

Our Miss T has had a very tough few months. She had a stye on her eye that started around Thanksgiving that got bigger and never went away (see Christmas post). It has been about three months and it has been hard for her to have this each day. Some people are just not tactful, and say really loud, "What happened to your eye?! You still have that?" She has been very strong about it. She looks people in the eye and tells them it is a stye, which is a bump and it will go away. However, there are times that I can tell that it hurts her a bit and she hangs her head down.

I took her in to the eye doctor last week to see if there was anything else we could do to get this to go away. As the doctor was checking her, he said that the stye was the best thing that happened to her. He found that she has very poor vision in her left eye (20/150). I was told that we are all born with poor vision; but later, the brain develops signals with the eyes and the vision gets better. However, in T's condition, her left eye stayed blurry and then what happens is that the brain shuts down the use of that eye in response. The great news is that it is something that can be corrected and fixed because it was caught so early. If she had gone in after the age of 8-9, the brain already sets in and it cannot be corrected.

We feel that the stye was a blessing in disguise. We had to get her glasses that she has to wear all the time while awake. I have to patch up her right eye (the good one) four hours a day to force her to use the bad one. This will help build up the bad one and make it stronger. It will help her eye and brain connect and get more use out of it. I am very confident that she will be able to correct this problem. There have been very many success stories. Whether or not she will regain 20/20 vision is in question, but she will regain most, if not all, her sight back in that left eye. I actually had a similar problem at the same age. I wore glasses for most of my early life, but am now without them and can see better than most people that wear glasses. My glasses were literally coke bottle glasses, probably about 1/2 an inch thick. Also, in T's case, her eye has not crossed or turned in, which is good. Mine did and it straightened out.

She has been a great sport about all of this. I couldn't be more proud. I try not to let her see how bad I feel for her. I am trying to make it fun and exciting for her. I took her to pick out two pairs of glasses. She looks beautiful in them. She is so excited to have them. For the patches, I ordered some really cute ones with cute designs on them to keep her excited. I am going to try and have her play computer games, card games, draw,etc. while she is patching so that she looks forward to it and also so that she can use her eye better to focus during that four hours per day. As a mother, I hate that she has to go through this, and want her to be as happy and confident as possible. I know how mean kids can be out there and I know I need to prepare her for it. However, she is a very strong girl and realize that she can handle more than I think. She has had her glasses for one full week now and has been great about keeping them on. So far, so good. Everyone around her has been very positive. I am thankful for everyone's support! We will keep you posted on her progress.

Here's our T at her ballet/tap recital the morning before we picked up her new glasses.

Here she is with the new glasses, with her happy, cheesy smile...