Eye problems

Josiah has trouble with his eyes. We noticed he "scans", looking for something to focus on. His eyes are almost constantly moving. You can tell when he's seen something - his eyes lock postion, and his face lights up. Don't get me wrong - Josiah can see. He reaches for toys, and has good (developing) hand-eye coordination. He just apparently can't see at distance.

The plunket nurse referred us to our GP, who referred us to an opthamologist (specialist in eyes and eye muscles) at Wanganui Hospital. The first appointment had to be delayed due to snow, but we were able to get a new appointment for a week later. This was the end of last month. Ellen (the opthamologist) said that there is definitly something wrong, and we go back after Labour Weekend to do some more tests. We'll see Ellen again, and a colleauge of hers who is a specialist in the back of the eye, as well as a paediatrician. The paed. app. is just to check everything else has developed as expected for his age.

Nathaniel and I hope they find something! We really don't want to hear that its just a muscle strength thing, and that he'll get better as he gets older.

Have any of you other mums experienced anything similar?

I hope it comes right and you find out what is causing it!!
Karen.

K$ Js mum, We also went through this with Micheal and it was two years of treatment before they operated on him. He had a huge squint and we did the patching and the drops we also paid $500 for glasses as this sometimes stop them squinting. Eventually they decided that his vision in his bad eye was getting to bad so they operated. Not nice it entails taking the eye out of the socket and shortning the muscle. They did both of Micheals eyes at the same time and boy was he miserable. We were told that if the squint is not fixed by the age of eight the vision loss in the bad eye is usually permanent. Patch helps strenthen the weak eye blah blah. I can understand you getting frustrated. If you are anything liike me you want it fixed. They seem very slow on moving with squints.

Good Luck hopefully it's something simple that can be corrected.

Thanks Marlene. Good luck for your visit on Tuesday!

hey becca actually pretty good jaidyn has been off eye drops and patches for a month and he hasnt gone backwards (he improved a little while on them) which is good and is back on patches again to see how he goes.   between him and his brother ripping them off all the time it can be a mission keeping them on so if it doenst work they want him back on drops but am reluctant as it can have effects on the good eye - which they told me is minimal but i stood up tp them and said today that i didnt feel any effect was "minimal" when it comes to my sons vision whcih made her stop in her tracks abit and have a think. but other than that its good news and we will just have to see how it goes. how did your appoint go??

Marlene, that's fantastic! So nice to get good news, isn't it?

Thanks, Emma, that's really great to hear.

Okay... today. My best friend of 13.5 years lives in Wanganui. Her husband took the day off work to look after Kiya for us (he has built up quite a lot of time off, which he needs to use up before the end of the year, so it worked really well for both of us!) So Kiya had a picnic at Kowhai Park, and fed the ducks at the lake, and played and played and played. It was so good not to have to try to keep her busy!

We had 3 appointments today: Paediatrics at 11:15am, the paediatric opthamologist (Ellen) at 1pm, and another opthamologist (Mr de Kock) at 1:30pm. As we were coming in from Ohakune, Ellen got someone to do a whole lot of running around and organise these appointments to happen in one day.

The first appointment, with the Paediatrician, went really well. Ellen wanted Josiah checked out to be totally sure there wasn't anything else going on as well. He did a 6mth milestones checkup, and said Josiah has reached all the proper milestones and is slightly advanced in some areas. He wanted to know what we were there for!

At 1pm, we saw Ellen. She did some little tests and confirmed that Josiah is seeing more/further than he was last time she saw him. She put some drops in his eyes to fix the dilation, then we waited around for just over 45 minutes before we got to see Mr de Kock. He checked the general health of Josiah's eyes.

Turns out, the pigment at the back of his eyes is speckled. This could be part of the problem or it could be completely irrelevant - pretty much only time will tell us. Mr de Kock told us Josiah is long-sighted, and can see things far off but not at short or middle distance. Ellen told us afterwards that at Josiah's age, his brain is compensating for being unable to see, and is working harder so that he can focus up close.

Mr de Kock suggested glasses, but Ellen wants to wait until Josiah is closer to 18months old. The next step is that we go back in December, when they will put Josiah under general anestetic and dilate his eyes again, then check the responses properly. It was a little hard to do today, as his eyes kept roaming trying to focus on something.

Edited by becca.l

that's great news for both of you. I'm glad to hear things are comming along. K&Jsmum good on you for standing up to them, for ages I kept asking them if Micheal was colour blind on top of his other problems and they tested him and said no I was sure he was as he kept confusing colours al the time, anyway after months of arguing with the hospital we got him checked independantly and he has a huge colour deficet, greens yellow browns black, blue is purple and brown is red. The hospital has now conceded that they missed it. All I can say is a mother knows, and sometimes best. Becca glad to hear it may be something simple, good luck with the testing in December, I was a big baby and cried the first time they put micheal under a nurse had to give me a hug and said it was very normal, so I'll be thinking about you. After the nineth time I started getting used to it. You'll be amazed at how quickly you get used to all their names for eye problems although I still can't prnounce most of micheals so I use the dumbed down meanings.

thats great news becca about josiahs milestones!! Good luck for the next visit and let us know what happens

wow thats great news. must be a load off your mind. now you can go and enjoy xmas without and niggles in the back of your mind. yay!!