Glasses Update

It seems like we've had a lot of appointments lately and there is so much updating to do...but first up tonight is the glasses.

Aubrey had a recheck today on her eyes.  When she went 6 weeks ago, the doctor noticed that her optical nerve was enlarged.  So today was the recheck on that.  The doctor wasn't sure if that was "baseline" Aubrey or if there might be other problems going on.  So the recheck was to make sure that it wasn't changing or growing...and it was the same!  That being said...they are going to dig a little deeper.  Our doctor seems lots of kiddos with Down syndrome and while it is not uncommon for them to have a larger optical nerve, in her experience, Aubrey's looked a little different than what she is used to seeing.  She was also a little concerned, after doing some reading up, that there might be a connection between the sensory-neural hearing loss and an enlarged optical nerve.

What does this mean?  Just to be on the safe side, Aubrey will be getting an MRI...which will be sedated.  No hurry, she said, but she just wants to be sure and is 90% sure that it will come back fine.  We will need to check with our cardiologist, who we just happen to be seeing this coming Monday, and check on anestisia requirements and whether they want her to have it done at the cardiac hospital or whether it can be done locally.

It was also decided that her vision wasn't bad enough and she appears to be seeing fine...so the glasses will wait for now.  We go back in ONE YEAR!  Seems like a long time, but I will be monitoring it carefully between now and then and we may go back sooner, or have her checked at the pediatricians anytime that we are there.

She was a happy girls today!

In other "GLASSES" news:

If your child all of the sudden starts watching tv like this:

(always from like 12-24 inches from the screen--yes a whole movie this way:)

Or has an eye that sometimes (or all the time) strays like this:

Especially after an episode of very high fevers...

You should call your eye doctor immediately!

Turns out that Ella has some eye problems too (not related to the fever...but could have been)!  It all boils down to...she needed some glasses pretty bad!  She has a few things going on, but the glasses will not only help her see, but should help with the straying...and if they don't by the time we go back in January, then we will have to do some patching of her good eye to strengthen the bad eye.  THANK GOODNESS Disney got in on the eye patch thing too, because they have some really cool pink princess patches that should make that whole process a lot easier:)

So today, we picked them up and she is very pleased with her new pink glasses.

On the drive home she kept saying the funniest things...like:

Ella:  "Mom, the trees look like they have rainbows on them (colored leaves:)."

Me:  "What do they look like without glasses?"

Ella:  "Just plain."

Ella:  "Mom, the stop lights have big black dots on them too!"

Me:  "What do they look like without glasses?"

Ella:  "Just colors and little gray dots!"

I didn't really expect her to have such a reaction to getting them...but am amazed at what she wasn't seeing before and so grateful that she can see it all now.  She is one smart cookie though and I"m a little afraid of what she will be able to do now that she is seeing everything so clearly!