cindy's blog

Success

My son was diagnosed with strabismus when he was 3. He had an eye injury and in treating that we discovered his lazy eye. We began patching right away.

When he was a little older and our doctor moved out of state we went to a new opthmalogist who introduced us to the patches that go right on the glasses. They were so much easier and we could contain it to the amount of time that would be most beneficial. My son was pretty successful but I was not satisfied with the answer that he would always need glasses. Thus, I started investigating vision therapy. We found a wonderful optometrist who said the therapy could be very beneficial for my son. This doctor also told him to PLAY VIDEO GAMES WHILE PATCHING. For some reason, I don't recall the opthamologist ever giving us that advice. Well, my then 9 year old son had permission to play video games almost as much as he wanted to as long as he also patched. It was the perfect fix. He started vision therapy last year when he was 10 and did it for about 6 months. It really wasn't bad. The drive was the worse part because the office was about 40 minutes away and our appts. were after school which was when rush hour would kick in. One day he walked into the doctor's office with his Nintendo DS Lite and when the doctor saw it she was curious so he showed her and she said it was wonderful and to keep it up especially while patching. Wow, what more could a 10 year old boy want??

He completed his therapy and she was very happy with the progress he had made. She tweeked his glasses a little bit more and when we went back for his 6 month checkup (his homework is to patch an hour a day still) he had made even more progress. He can now read on the 20/20 line whereas at the end of therapy he was reading the 20/30 line. He also was able to get 100% on the depth perception test but before he started he only got 3 out of 10 and after therapy he had 8 out of 10. She wants him to keep patching the 1 hour during screen time which he is OK with and we go back in 6 months again. She'd like him to switch to contacts but he's not quite ready for that. So he will always wear glasses but I feel he is so much better off after having the therapy. He no longer rests his head on his arm when doing his homework, he's much better at sports, and he even says he sees better. What more can a mom ask for?