Two Years Into Exotropia Therapy...

Please keep in mind that I am not a doctor and have no medical background. I am just writing based on my experiences and occasionally I may get things wrong.



Isa spent two years wearing patches from at first half hour a day to an hour and a half a day.  This was easy most days but every once in a while Isa would question why she had to, but in the end she would always do it. She was a real trooper about it.  Some days I have to admit that we forgot to patch and yes I did feel guilty about it but I always tried my best.  We did make sure to patch during sitting times, like watching tv, reading a story or coloring, never during active playing.  We found out very early on that during her patching her depth perception wasn't very good and therefore causing a few falls.



I knew from my research that double vision was a very bad sign for Isa's condition and so when my sweet husband Jon mentioned Isa had, had it during a conversation, I freaked! I explained to him as best as I understood it, that once a person starts having double vision eventually the brain tells the eye to ignore vision from one eye in order to avoid confusion.  With time the eye will lose vision in that the brain no longer recognizes the vision from that eye. 



Immediately the next day (since the Dr. S's office was already closed) I called to find out what needed to be done.  Dr. S's assistant said that since Isa had an upcoming appointment within two weeks we didn't need to make one earlier.  Those two weeks were grueling!!! I didn't know what to expect.  Besides the fact that she was experiencing the occasional double vision she also seemed to experience the drifting of at least one of her eye's for a minimum of once a day, usually when she was very tired.



Two weeks came after what seemed forever and again I had to make the trip by myself which made it all the more nerve wrecking.  There I sat very nervous with Isa upset about having to get dilated and Max wanting to touch everything in the exam room.  Dr. S took a few minutes to do all the examinations and there it was, SURGERY!!! Ahh, I knew it was coming but nonetheless it was hard to hear!  I wanted to break down crying and although Dr. S said it was an easy outpatient surgery I couldn't help but worry.  I also felt that although I was hearing that the surgery was going to be easy it was MY BABY that was having it and having to go under general anesthesia and no easy surgery was truly going to be easy to deal with.



We drove back to where we were living later that week and I couldn't help but feel a cloud over me.  A cloud of mixed emotions, ranging from anger to sadness.  I felt sad that Isa had exotropia to begin with but also sad that she now required surgery.  I also felt anger at myself, was it something I did or didn't do?  I know that it may sound silly all the emotions I went through for something that may seem fairly simple to some people, but that is how I felt, overall just scared.  Luckily the feeling of  blame and anger didn't last long and I was able to accept it.  I felt thankful that that is the only thing Isa was dealing with.