Improvement!

I must say I'm pretty close to speechless . . . and that doesn't happen very often! Sumana saw the developmental eye doctor yesterday. I looked back at older posts and she has tested as poorly as 20/70 in her right eye. Yesterday she 'almost' made it to 20/50. I think I've mentioned how much she has resisted patching her right eye. She was supposed to be patching her eye 2-3 HOURS a day. In reality she has been doing it about 30 minutes a day. . . if that. When we went to the doctor yesterday I didn't expect to see any improvement, in fact I expected to have to accept the fact that she was nearly blind in one eye.

I can't even begin to express how stunned I was to hear that there had actually been improvement in her right eye. The doctor is not even close to being ready to talk about corrective lenses or visually adapted reading materials. He wants to see her get to 20/30 and THEN he'll have her start vision therapy (more exercises!!) and THEN maybe talk about corrective lenses.

Because Sumana has been so resistant to patching, the doctor explained WHY she needs to do this. He explained that to drive, you need to have a certain level of vision. He told her that it is only for 10 weeks and if she is faithful, he won't have to prescribe eye drops (which she hates). Once her right eye is strong enough, he told her that he can help her train her eyes to work together as a team. (They probably have never done that before). When they are working together correctly, she won't have the blurriness and double vision (that's from the left, dominant eye taking over for the right eye). I think the doctor got through to her. She only has to patch her eye two hours a day and it can be for 20 minute intervals throughout the day.

I am so relieved! I have been making plans to buy a Nook and subscribing to a large public library to try to get reading materials for Sumana that have a larger font. I've been concerned about all of her school subjects and the small size of the font that is used as the kids advance. The doctor told me how to make a typoscope for Sumana. This will help isolate one or two lines of reading material, and he says that's all the assistance she needs at this point. He showed me the type size that she can read and it is the size of most of her books or even smaller. Her problem is with crowding and with the typoscope, that will help eliminate that problem. How cool is that??

Anyway, please be in prayer for our girl. Sumana picked up a really bad cold this week and it's gone to her chest. She doesn't have a fever yet, but the albuterol and cough assist aren't helping. We'll be off to the doctor's today or tomorrow. Sigh . . . She's pretty concerned because she is anxiously awaiting her surgery April 18th and doesn't want anything to get in the way of that! (What a trooper!!)