Ophthalmology

   While looking through my previous posts from May and June I realized that I never posted anything about Emma's eye appointment and getting her glasses. Sometimes I feel like we are terrible at organizing Emma's pictures and I can't find some months or they are mixed in with other random pictures, so it took me a little bit to find her pictures from her first (out-patient) eye appointment on May 29th. This is another reason why I like to blog and post a lot of pictures on Facebook, in case I can't find them in other places when I need them later.
   Part of this will have to be information from the Internet since I do not fully understand how a doctor can look into an 11 month old's eyes and determine that they needs glasses. Michael asked the ophthalmologist last week what he checks for when looking at Emma's eyes, but the answer did not really clear up anything for me since I am not an eye expert. However, I still wrote down that he said he uses the retinoscope. When talking to her doctors I often want to borrow a quote from The Office and say, "Explain it to me like I'm a 5 year old." The main thing I remember him saying is that he was looking at the optic nerve and saw that it was short, meaning she is far sighted, so her glasses help her see things up close. He also said, "The rest of her is short, so it would make sense that her option nerve is too" but, to me, that does not seem like a real thing.. I think my mom is far sighted and she is a lot taller than Emma!
   These are pictures from Emma's first appointment on May 29th ~ She looks so young! :)

   After this appointment we picked out her frames. Michael has a better fashion and decorating sense, so he narrowed it down to light blue or light purple for her glasses colors. They had about 20 colors to choose from. I liked the light pink, but in the end, the light blue looked best against her skin tone. I was worried that since our medical insurance does not cover glasses, that it would be about $700, but I think it was about $150 for the frames and lenses. Our neighbor laughed at us when we said our insurance doesn't cover glasses since Michael and I both wear glasses full-time. Well I do, I don't know why Michael doesn't wear his all of the time. I think he is even more handsome with glasses! :)
   On the wall was a framed diagram and at the bottom I saw a drawing of a kid with one eye facing forward and one eye facing in towards the nose. Under the drawing it was labeled "Esotropia". That is what Emma has in both eyes and the glasses are supposed to help correct that. She got her glasses on her birthday (June 12th) and it has seemed to help with the eyes switching which one faces in, or her simply going cross-eyed, but only while wearing the glasses. A good chunk of the time she is not wearing glasses (at night), her eyes are all over the place! I have lots of photos of her displaying her Esotrophia. She also has Anisocoria, where her right pupil is bigger than the left. In Michigan, they thought it was a result of her cardiac arrest and needing emergency drugs, but I quickly told them that I also have that "condition". I noticed it one day, about 10 years ago. To me it has no effect, except that my right eye can see a little bit more clearly at a distance? I'm nearsighted though, so that makes us different.
   These are pictures from Emma's recent appointment on October 16th:

   Here is (word for word, from ForLittleEyes.com) what I just found about how it works ~ The retinoscopy was an objective refraction. It looked at the shape of her eye to see how well she could focus without requiring a response from her. Much of how clearly a person can see is related to the shape of the eye and where the lens of the eye focuses the light. If you are hyperoptic (farsighted), light focuses behind the retina. So understanding how the eye is shaped and where the light is focused tells the eye doctor what shape corrective lenses need to be to get the light focusing in the right spot.
   This time he did tell us that it looked like Emma's eyes have changed 10% since May, meaning 10% of the time she will have to use the eye muscles to focus where the glasses don't make everything perfectly clear. He says at the next appointment in February he may need to change her lens prescription. Emma did very well following the sparkle ball (it looked like a 4th of July toy) as the doctor moved it back and forth, up and down to get her to move her eyes around so he could see into different parts of her eye. We are so proud of everything she does and is learning. Our new thing lately is when she is laying down, we put our hands out for her and she grabs on to our hands (versus just laying there staring, like, "What?") so we can sit her up or pick her up.