Sunday, October 7, 2012

Patch Logan



During the summer we noticed Logan's right eye wandering out at times.  Sometimes I thought my own eyes were playing tricks on me because it was so quick. Incidentally, we took him to the doctor for an ear infection and she noticed it as well.  She referred us to a pediatric opthamologist in Charleston, SC.  We went to his appointment at the end of July.  The doctor said he had a condition called strabismus, which is basically just a wandering eye.  She said most of the time his eyes were straight, but it didn't take much to get his eye messed up and wandering.  She said the first step was to try patch therapy.  We put a patch over his eye for one hour every other day.  The whole idea is to cover his strong eye to force his weak eye straight in order to see.  She said he still may eventully need corrective surgery, but they try these less invasive techniques first.  However, we have actually seen a pretty big improvement in his eye since we started patching. We used to see it wander briefly several times throughout the day.  Now, sometimes he'll go a whole day and I won't notice it.  My first thought when she told me about the patching was "yeah right, lady, like a one year old is going to keep this patch over his eye for an hour!"  I was very surprised when we first put it on and he messed with it a few seconds then forgot about it! It's sticky around the edges like a band aid so he'd have to pull pretty hard to get it off.  We've realized the best time to put it on is first thing in the morning when he's eating breakfast in his high chair.  The kid loves to eat, so not much distracts him from it.  We put a few pieces of cereal on his tray to keep his hands occupied while we apply the patch and by the time we start feeding him breakfast he's forgotten about it.