Life is Crazy with 6: Kenzie's Eyes

Ok - so it has been along time since I posted. Sorry. I'm never sure whether it is better to do several shorter posts or one long one - we'll see how this goes to see which I'm doing! I guess I'll start with what everyone asks me most about - Mackenzie and her new glasses. She is now doing fine wearing them - most of the time (right now they are sitting next to me on the CPU)

The first question I get is "How did you know she needed glasses?" Well, over the holidays a couple of the relatives mentioned that she looked cross-eyed. At that point I thought it was because she has different shaped and bigger eyes than my other kids - and her nose is flatter across the bridge, so she just looked cross eyed. Right after the first of the year, I was laying down with her sitting on me, playing, and she was trying to put a lid on something. She was having a really hard time and one of her eyes started to cross - while the other stayed focused on the object. It got to the point that she was trying to close one eye in order to see what she was doing. Needless to say, I was slightly worried.

Next question is always "How to they know what her prescripton should be?" I took her to her Doc, and he said it was probably a lazy eye, and sent me to the optometrist. (Now when I made this appointment I stressed that she was only 18 months old and should she be seeing a specialist?) We went to the appointment - and Mackenzie wasn't happy with the lights shining in her eyes, and some strange man trying to tell her to let him look - just for a second. Well, he concluded that yes - her eyes weren't tracking together, and usually that is caused by being farsighted, but since she wouldn't let him look, he wasn't sure how farsighted. (after doing some internet searching, I had already realized that this was probably her problem - a lazy eye can result from ignoring the crossing, but not usually until grade school - in a child her age it was because her eyes were working so hard to focus and the point where we all go cross-eyed was a lot further out for her) He referred her to a pediatriac opthomologist (gee what a good idea!) There is one such doctor in the area - and he has an office in Silverdale, and on Bainbridge Island. Silverdale was booked until mid to late March, but the could get me in on Bainbridge the following week. The receptionist said that the couple of month delay waiting for the Silverdale appointment wouldn't make a big difference in her condition. Now it the 3 weeks I had since we had noticed the crossing, it had gotten even worse - so I took the Bainbridge appointment. Dr. Cheung was very nice, and was able to get Mackenzie to co-operate. (Imagine that - a doc who specializes in little kids being able to actually work with them and not get frustrated when they fuss because you are shining bright lights in their eyes!) After the intial exam, he had her eyes dialated - which in kids takes about 30-45 minutes to take affect. With them dialated, he was able to determine her prescription by using the light and looking through lenses at how her eyes focused - instead of an eye chart reflected on the wall, they had a video of toys similar to the energizer bunny going. He told me she is far-sighted - extremely far-sighted. He held up the lense for me to look through that would give me an idea of what she sees. Her correction is +5.0 in one eye, and +5.5 in the other. With glasses, the crossing should correct itself - in about 2/3 of kids. The other 1/3 could need anything from patching and eyedrops to surgery. He said the good news is that the amount of time between noticing the crossing and getting glasses on the child has a direct effect on which group they end up in. Getting Kenzie in as quickly as I did means she has an even better chance of being in the 2/3 that doesn't need surgery. (He should maybe share that fact with his receptionist that tried to tell me the 2 month wait for an appointment wouldn't really matter.)

These first couple of p

ictures from the beginning of Jan when we first noticed the crossing.

These next ones were taken the night of her appointment with Dr. Cheung - about 9 hours after they dilated her eyes - not only does it take longer for the dilating to take affect on kids - but it takes a lot longer to wear off -

we found this out with Kaylee when she had to go to a mini-

golf/slumber party wearing sun glasses more than 6 hours after she had them dilated (they said it would take 4-5 hours at the most) - with Mackenzie it took even longer. Her eyes still looked dilated a couple of hours after she got up the next morning. The dilating made the crossing even more obvious - and I had to take her to a basketball game with me where we got all kinds of questions.

It was a long day - and she fell asleep listing to my i-pod - one of her favorite things - only she usually dances around with it or wants mom to cuddle to go to sleep. I put her on my bed listening to the i-pod while I helped get the other kids to bed - when I came back she was out.

Ok - on to the last questions - "Does she keep them on?" or "How do you get her to keep them on?" Yeah the first few days quickly disspelled the assistant helping to fit Mackenzie with her glasses that said that the kids are usually so excited to see clearly that they usually keep the glasses on with no problem. Yeah right. Mackenzie screamed and cried and ripped them off everytime I tried to put them on. I felt awful - like I was the biggest, meanest mom ever. She hated them. I would have to hold her hands down and force them on her, and then try to distract her so she'd keep them on. This was very time consuming. Luckily, it happened to be really nice that week, so I'd take her outside on walks around the house, and then she'd keep them on for about 30 minutes.

After a couple of days of this, I went to the internet to see if there was any advice. That wasn't very encouraging. They suggested bribing them with stickers (but not food because that would lead to eating issues later in life) trying to explain them that it was for their benefit - and several other useless ideas obviously geared to much older kids - at 19 months I really didn't think Kenzie would get that if she wore her glasses for 30 minutes - she could have a sticker (or care for that matter). Other people said they went through the same struggles I was going through and after 2 or 3 months their kids were up to wearing the glasses for 3 or 4 hours a day. Yeah - her doctor wanted them on her all the time. And I really didn't think I could handle the struggle for 2 or 3 more months.

Well after some prayer and a lot of trying to stay calm, I was holding Mackenzie one afternoon getting her down for her nap after spending the morning trying to convince her to wear her glasses, when I thought if I could just get her use to the feel of them on her face, maybe she wouldn't fight them so much. I decided to try putting them on her while she slept. I sat there and cuddled her while she wore her glasses and slept for about 1 1/2 hours. (I didn't want to leave her by herself in case she rolled over on them,and damaged them or herself). I then took them off (I had to get back to reality - but after the days of struggle, it was so nice just to spend some quiet time with her), and she slept a little longer. When she woke up, she didn't fight the glasses nearly as much and has steadily gotten better and better about wearing them. She now is very quick to point them out to other people (mostly those that are also wearing glasses) and wants to use her cleaning cloth on them (they get really dirty a lot - the other day I think I cleaned them about 10 times - including taking the refried beans, and then chocolate mousse off - we went to Azteca for Lyndsey's birthday) and put them in their case at nap and bed time. We don't get the "she looks just like a Cupie Doll" anymore but we get a lot of "she is so stinkin'/totally/ completely/(fill-in your word here) cute with her curls and glasses!" I've gotten use to getting a lot of looks when we go out between Kevin's height and six kids - but we get even more looks now, and they all have a grin on them - as Kenzie waves and grins at them all.