eye tests and drops from hospital for 5 year old DD?

sandy71

My son has these drops and his main problem is if he has to walk anywhere afterwards, because he can't focus he walks into everything. Not sure why they make him walk to a different room!

He doesn't like them at the time but he is pretty good and knows it won't last.

Hope everything goes well for your DD

Savvy_Sue

dollydoodah wrote: »

To be honest, I find that the glasses vary in how tough they are. Some we have had have fallen apart at the slightest knock (the screws or lens drops out),

A general point, DH's most recent pair of glasses were like this, a screw forever coming loose and lense falling out. On our final trip to the optician, she said there was a glue she could use, and that seems to have fixed it!

Do sort it if you possibly can: my Dad had this problem and it wasn't sorted when he was young, he managed fine until he had a bleed behind his 'good' eye and he was then effectively blind. Although the eye surgeon did say the sight in his 'blind' eye did improve marginally to compensate, he found it very frustrating.

Mind you he was 84 when this happened and it hadn't stopped him doing anything until then, so no immediate panic needed!

pigpen

There is an argument that the patch therapy is totally ineffective so that might be something you would like to check out further before committing to it.

My cousin wore glasses from being 9 months old.. he wore cardboard tubes on his arms so he couldn't get them off until he was used to them.. he regularly had the drops and other than the light aversion until they wore off he had no bad effect. He is 18 now... and still hugely long sighted, he has had an operation to correct a twitch in the eye muscles which didn't help his vision at all and he also had patch therapy at one hospital.. when he was changed to a different consultant who is one of the countries leading specialists in opthalmology he basically said it was a total waste of time.. this is possibly due to the type of problems my cousin has I am not certain.. but it does seem to be dished out as the norm.

My son is now under the same consultant who is fabulous with the littlies.. and he has a pack of nurses trained to deal with children of all ages and all disabilities.. mine has an extra tear duct.. first tim we went as we walked in he said 'AAHHH this is the young man with dodgy guttering, not seen one of these for many many years!!' He was very reassuring to my son who was terrified he was going to operate on his eye while he sat there wide awake.. bit of a wuss my boy lol.

I'm sure all will be fine one way or another.. you know yourself you can life a full life with the use of only one eye.. sure as heck is better than none!!

hugs for you though, I know how stressful these rounds of tests are.. if you are confident and relaxed she will be too!!

atwitsend_2

Many thanks everyone! You have certainly all put my mind at ease
I am dubious about the patching, I remember at 12 having it done for an hour in the evening, was so annoying because I couldn't see anything out of my bad eye and would end up just going to sleep because I was so bored :rotfl:
but I am willing to give anything a go to get DD's eyes even just a little better, seeing them hold up a massive card with a letter on and her not having a clue they have, was heart renching, I know its not my fault officially but its still me that has passed the !!!!!! genes on to her

dollydoodah

Savvy_Sue wrote: »

A general point, DH's most recent pair of glasses were like this, a screw forever coming loose and lense falling out. On our final trip to the optician, she said there was a glue she could use, and that seems to have fixed it!

I think I jinxed myself last night as this morning DD's glasses have a wobbly arm so it is back to the optician yet again! We have used the glue trick many times to seal the screws - it is not surprised they come loose really with the amount of wear that they get but gluing does seem to work.

atwitsend wrote:

I am willing to give anything a go to get DD's eyes even just a little better, seeing them hold up a massive card with a letter on and her not having a clue they have, was heart renching, I know its not my fault officially but its still me that has passed the !!!!!! genes on to her

Aaaaw, you can't help genetics but what you are doing is the best thing you can do by getting her treated. This is the honest truth - a little girl in the same year as my DD needs glasses really badly as her eyes are horrific but her mum doesn't make her wear them as she doesn't think they suit her. :mad: The girl has glasses and has had them since she was small, but as mum never made her wear them, she doesn't. We went through huge battles to get my DD to wear hers at first; it was really hard and we had tears and tantrums when she was a toddler, but now it is second nature to her. This other little girl is way behind in class as she can't see properly but her mum is adamant that until she is old enough for contact lenses she won't be wearing glasses. Sadly the damage will probably have already been done by then.

Indie_Kid

dollydoodah wrote: »

Aaaaw, you can't help genetics but what you are doing is the best thing you can do by getting her treated. This is the honest truth - a little girl in the same year as my DD needs glasses really badly as her eyes are horrific but her mum doesn't make her wear them as she doesn't think they suit her. :mad: The girl has glasses and has had them since she was small, but as mum never made her wear them, she doesn't. We went through huge battles to get my DD to wear hers at first; it was really hard and we had tears and tantrums when she was a toddler, but now it is second nature to her. This other little girl is way behind in class as she can't see properly but her mum is adamant that until she is old enough for contact lenses she won't be wearing glasses. Sadly the damage will probably have already been done by then.

I will never understand people who do this. There is nothing wrong with wearing glasses - I've worn them on & off for the the last 17/18 years. (when I was about 10, I could see ok without them on; now I can't see much even with them on)

Js_Other_Half

Patching will only work on a child up to aged 8 or so - I had it done at 9, and it was way too late for me.

Actually having children's eyes tested should be much higher up govt priorities than it is. We're all told to get our children's teeth checked from being toddlers, but given that they're milk teeth you can usually get another chance later on when their adult teeth come in; if a child hasn't had their eyesight sorted by 8 then it might never be right.

HelenKA_2

Our DD was a few weeks off 6 when we saw the hospital. They asked for 4 hours of patching a day plus glasses. I was so upset initially worrying that she'd get teased etc plus beating myself up that we hadn't noticed before.

I went in to speak to the teacher and she was brilliant, I'd advise that you do this before you send the child to school with the patch on. Miss B did a circle time and they all looked at the patch, discussed why (lazy eye - do they patch for anything else?) etc etc.

The hospital said that she will srtuggle to do close work or see the board in class at least initially so the teacher was happy that for the first couple of weeks she would patch DD at lunch since in P3 the closer work was still being done in the morning session.

After a week or two we switched to patching from first thing in the morning till lunch time because this would get it over with and would also exercise the eye well.

The patches are really snazzy, I'm so grateful to Miss B for her help and expertise. Not one child ever said anything to DD about it nasty or otherwise, they just all accepted the situation.

I like to think too that it helped another boy who had to be patched a few months later as no-one batted an eye lid at him. Lets just say that if they had they may have needed an eye dressing themselves!!

All the people who have dealt with us have been so helpful and more than happy to explain everything, if we as parents and the child don't understand then the optics won't get anywhere near as much co-operation and therefore not as good result.

When we went back to the hospital they said they'd never seen as dramatic an improvement. Pat on the back for us! But we were very lucky DD never once complained and we didn't even have to do incentives/sticker charts etc. They keep you going back regularly as to overpatch is as bad as not patching at all.

So the patching went on for about 6 months or possibly less and she will continue to need glasses to keep on exersizing this eye plus compensating for her other prescription.

She has always chosen her glasses from the NHS selection and her twin was rather put out that she wasn't getting a pair!

One last thing, try to get into a routine of having a certain spot to put your glasses when you take them off ALWAYS! So you know where they are and so they won't get trodden on accidently.

Hope all this is helpful, with your DD being much the same age I'm happy to answer any questions you or she might have if you would like.

Helen

atwitsend_2

Thank you Helen! brilliant advice!