Eye-yi-yi

Remember last year when I took Annalee to the eye doctor? It's that time again. And since I have a firmly vested interest in seeing that children's eyes are checked at a young age, I will get up on my soap box for a minute and remind everyone about InfantSEE and lazy eye.

When I was 3 I was diagnosed with amblyopia, or lazy eye. That means that one of my eyes saw better than the other, so my brain stopped trying to see out of the bad eye. No one could tell anything was wrong by looking at me, and since I could still see perfectly well out of one eye, I didn't know either. I was legally blind in my right eye. They started treatment right away (covering my good eye with a patch to force my bad eye to see) and I regained a lot of vision in that eye, though it is still worse than my left. I was lucky they caught it so early, because the earlier you begin treatment the better it works. After age seven there is not much they can do.

Nowadays they can detect amblyopia and other eye problems in infants as young as six months of age. In fact, there is a nationwide program to provide free testing for infants 6-12 months of age. InfantSEE offers this doctor locator to find a participating optometrist. Even if your children are over 12 months of age (so it's not free) you should still get them tested--their vision is something they'll need for the rest of their lives!

(Other problems include muscle imbalances, ocular diseases, and strabismus, which is where the eyes don't line up to look at the same object--this is sometimes incorrectly called lazy eye, but left untreated it can CAUSE lazy eye.)

Here is a great article about InfantSEE and how they got started.

We already knew after our appt last year that Annalee didn't have any major problems, but because she is a little far-sighted, and because Nathan and I both had to wear glasses at such a young age we will be taking her back every year to watch things. We are lucky to have such an amazing doctor in our area that participates in the InfantSEE program. Dr. Lisa Porter in Idaho Falls (Family Vision Associates) is AMAZING with kids, absolutely fantastic. Annalee loved her, and cooperated with all the tests because Dr. Porter made it so fun. If you don't live close enough to use Dr. Porter, find a doctor in your area that participates. (Or, if all your kids are over a year, take them to any decent pediatric optometrist.)

And trust that I will be talking about this again in about 10 months when I take baby boy in for his free exam!