Amlyopi...what?

Yesterday we took Rooney to his first optometrist appointment. Taking a 15mo old may seem early to alot of people. It was very important to me that his eyes get checked and as you will read we had good reason.

Some of you know that I am severely nearsighted in my right eye. I was diagnosed with "lazy eye" (as I've always known it) when I was 5 years old. I wore glasses, a patch over my eye and I remember getting eye drops. My understanding was my eye was as strong as it was going to get when I was 13 and I no longer had to wear glasses full time. When I was a kid that was the extent of my knowledge of my condition. All I knew, or cared about, was that I did not have to worry about a patch or glasses again.

When I was pregnant I read somewhere that children, who have just 1 parent with "lazy eye", have a 50% chance of getting it. The earlier it is caught, the more they can do for the child and it was strongly suggested that children of parents that have this condition have their eyes checked in infancy. The good news is that Rooney inherited Mike's eyes. The MD said it would be very rare that Rooney would now develop "amblyopia". If you click on the link you can read about the condition and read that, even though the treatment is the same from when I was a kid, they feel that prolonged use of those techniques could have positive results. Rooney not having this condition was such a relief to me but I have to admit I was made a little sick to my stomach to think there was possibly more that could have been done for me. Mike and I are planning on having Lasik surgery soon. Mike should be able to come out it with 20/20 vision but for me they will only do surgery on my "bad eye" (my right eye) for fear if my good eye was traumatized in some fashion I would basically be blind. Also, after surgery my vision will only be somewhat better but it should push off the need for reading glasses to a bit later in life. Any better vision is better vision as I see it though. So look for updates about that surgery!

Anyway, Rooney could still develop other eye problems such as nearsightedness but not amblyopia. The MD suggested we bring Rooney back when he is 4 years old so that he could actually measure his sight.

Below are two pictures I found that show how a person with amblyopia sees things if they were to look through each eye independently.