It has been a year and a half since Tegan had his big eye surgery. He has done pretty well except I have noticed lately that his head tilt has started to go back to where it use to be before surgery....which was the whole point in that horrible surgery.
About 2 weeks ago he started asking me to take him to the eye doctor. He kept telling me that he couldn't see and that he needed some help. It seemed to come and go so at first I thought he was just messing with me. We have never really told him that he even has an eye condition but he talks about how painful his surgery was all the time. Last weekend, he asked me the entire weekend to call the eye doctor and please take him. I told him I had already called but the soonest appointment I could get with his big wig Dr. at Emory was June. He kept telling me he couldn't wait that long so I called back on Monday and got very lucky b/c they had a cancellation for yesterday (Thursday). He was so excited to go to the Dr....that's a first!
For the first time, I took him all by myself. I am totally capable of driving myself to Atlanta but my husband has never trusted my driving skills and my road rage so he has always took off work to go with us:) I forced him to let me go alone this time b/c while my road rage is bad, his patience is worst and these appointments at Emory can last as long as 4 hours. We got lucky yesterday and got out in 3 hours:)
I'm not going to lie, I-85 Atlanta traffic tenses me up. I mean, where else does the road change to 6 or 7 lanes but yet you are still expected to lane hop at 70-80 mph. I went 70 the whole time and still had people getting aggravated with me b/c apparently I was going too slow for them. No worries though, I made it there and back (through rush hour traffic) with no problems or hold ups at all and I never yelled any dirty words to the surrounding cars.
Back to Tegan.... The good news is that his actual vision hasn't gotten any worse. His vision is still measuring (or whatever word I should use there) the same as always 20/30.
The bad news is that it seems his vision is being blurred by his eye condition. You see he has Nystagmus, which is an uncontrolled side to side movement of the eye. It has gotten some better the older that he gets but when he gets nervous, stressed, anxious, aggravated or over stimulated, it makes his eyes move more....which I should say he is one of these 90% of the time. The reason why this is bad is b/c there is nothing that can be done about Nystagmus. He just has to learn to calm himself. When he gets anxious and his eyes move more, it blurs his vision which then makes him more anxious about not being able to see well so the cycle goes on and on.
She said he didn't need glasses and was basically sending us on our way to figure out how to deal with it but before we left she said she wanted to see us back in August to talk about a second surgery for his head tilt. When she said August, Tegan told her he couldn't wait that long. When she asked why he couldn't wait that long, his exact words were "I can't see now and need some glasses or something to help". She grabbed her little prescription pad and wrote him out a prescription right then and there. She told me that the glasses are an optional thing and to let him wear them when he thought he needed them. They probably won't help his vision but her hopes are that maybe they will be a comfort to him and it will be more of a mind over matter thing and will trick him in to thinking they are helping. I guess we shall see. I don't mind throwing some money in to some glasses if it may possibly help him. We just need to figure out a way to help him handle his anxieties and teach him to calm himself and his eyes.
I really hate that he has to deal with this. As a mother, of course I want my kids to be perfect and have no issues but I also know that it could be a lot worse. There are so many worse things than this and I am confident that through lots and lots of prayer and talking him through it, we can help him to control this or who knows, maybe God has a plan to heal his little eyes completely. Either way, he will be just fine and that is all that matters.
Oh and for the record I would like to say that I said a big prayer before getting in to rush hour traffic yesterday and it was like the good Lord cleared an entire lane just for me. I never had to switch lanes for like 15 exits and never had any terrifying moments. I would go so far as so say that I drove better through the traffic than I do riding through it with my husband driving. I hate transfer trucks and I am pretty sure my husband seeks out the two largest transfer trucks and makes sure to ride right in the middle of them for miles so that if one decides to come in to your lane, you are sure to be crushed between them and never survive. Me, I go 90 just to get ahead of them or 60 to stay behind them:)
