February 2022
Luke was born in February of 2022. He came out fast and fierce at 9 lbs. Thankfully, he gave us the least amount of grief in the hospital in that he wasn't jaundiced at all like his siblings before him. He did give us a little hiccup in that he wasn't able to be circumcised at the hospital due to a webbed penis. Not a problem, he just needed to see a pediatric urologist - that led to him being circumcised at 7 months because he was put under general anesthesia for it.
May 2022
At a couple months old, I noticed that, unlike other babies his age, he wasn't looking at things or tracking anything when he should have been at that point. He was still a chipper baby and easy to care for, but I made sure to bring it up to his pediatrician at his next appointment. Well, I did and they said that the office would send a referral to a pediatric ophthalmologist. Unfortunately, referrals from our doctor's office tend to take a long time to go through. I decided to take things into my own hands and find one on our own instead of waiting around. I started off with a Facetime call with my mom's cousin, Dave, who is a pediatric ophthalmologist. The call went great and as we suspected, he recommended that we take Luke in and have him seen. Just to be sure. There was a possibility that his eyes were just delayed in their development, but prevention is better than treatment. So began the search.
I looked up SO many ophthalmologists. I tried to find one that took our insurance so that we wouldn't have to pay for it, but sadly, next to no one takes Medicaid, and if they did, the time until the next appointment was further than we were comfortable with. I was trying to make the appointment in June and many offices weren’t available until September. So off the books we went. We went rogue haha. We ended up finding an office that could get him in at the end of June, so I made an appointment with her.
When I made the appointment with her, they mentioned that Luke needed to either have already had an appointment with Neurology or have one on the books based on what I had told them about my concerns. They were worried that it could be a neurological issue because they were suspicious he may have strabismus (we later found out this was not what he has).
End of June 2022
The appointment came and I was nervous. How in the world do you do an eye exam on a wiggly 6 month old? Anyways, we got to the appointment and in the initial room, they established that he did have some vision and his pupils did react to light, so that was a good sign. He didn't have total vision loss. They put the drops in his eyes to dilate them and we went and waited for them to dilate. It was quite funny seeing a baby with huge pupils, and he still looked as cute as ever. Finally, after about half hour, we were ready to meet with the doctor. She was lovely. She totally understood our concerns and was glad that we brought him in.
Side note, if you didn't know, it is possible to check the vision of a baby - or anyone who is nonverbal for that matter. Instead of sitting in a chair with lenses and spouting off letters, the doctor simply holds up the lenses and shines a light to the back of the eye. The way that they know what their prescription is based on the way that the light reflects off of the retina (or something like that) I'm not a doctor, so don't quote me on that. I do know that it is similar to how flashes turn the pupil red on cameras.
In the end, she established that his prescription was a +8.00. She established that his literal eyeballs are small and short - explaining his extreme farsightedness. She gave us some recommendations of opticians to see to order his glasses and what brand to get. The brand is the Tomato's brand.
We ended up going and putting in the order for his glasses that day, which was a blessing, as the location was un
der renovation and in process of switching medical networks and had really weird hours and days they were open. About a week later, we picked up his glasses and oh goody, he is such a cutie in his glasses. Unfortunately he doesn't wear them very long, which we're slowly working on.
Fast forward 3 months or so, and we went back to the eye doctor for his checkup and because of the multiplicity of his eye issues, she decided to to some genetic testing on him. Thankfully, this testing was free and it wasn't a burden at all.
After a couple of weeks, we got the results back and they were a little surprising especially since we assumed that it would come back with nothing to report. Well, we were wrong. I will be writing a more in depth post about the testing and what the the results of that were.
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