Tuesday, August 08, 2006

The patching continues

Darn! I keep hoping we'll show up at Duke and Whitney's eyes will be magically "all better," but this is a much slower process than I hoped.

Whitney was very excited to go to the doctor today. I wish I would've taken a picture of her. She looked SO cute today. I moved my camera to a new storage spot in the house and I don't think it's working. I need to move it back because I keep forgetting to take pictures! Anyway, you'll have to take my word for it. She loves Dr. Buckley, her Pediatric Opthalmologist. (I've been spelling that for about a year now, and I'm still not sure if that's right.) As soon as they called her name to come back, she started jumping up and down and saying, "I get to see Dr. Buckley!" It was so cute. Of course, she had to see two other people before she got to see him. And when her big moment to see him finally did come, she acted shy. Silly girl.

Well, her vision test went ok. For children her age, who are old enough to talk, but don't know the alphabet, they use black and white figures like a birthday cake, a pony, a Christmas tree, a telephone, etc, to test their eyes. They start off really big and progressively get smaller. Normally she is very cooperative and loves to tell you what she sees on the screen, but she was not really into it this time. We had to really coax her to get her to say anything at the beginning. The woman who was doing the test was really patient and good at what she does. She promised Whitney that she would "do the chicken" if Whitney could tell us what she saw. When Whitney named the object, we would both cheer and the woman would walk around like a chicken. It was so funny. (If only she knew the history of the "whole chicken!")

Her vision has improved since our last visit, in June. At that time she was 20/70 in her right eye and 20/30 in her left. This time she tested 20/50 in her right eye and 20/25 in her left. Dr. Buckley prescribed 6 more weeks of patching. (I was SO ready to be done, but here we go again.) He hopes by that time she'll be 20/40 or 20/30, which I guess is the goal. I hope so too! On the bright side, at least the patching is still working to improve her vision. I'm grateful for that.

Poor Andrew had plant meetings at work this morning. So, he left before 6 am this morning. Then he went with us up to Duke. When we got home, he went straight to Stake Welfare meeting or something like that and he still isn't home yet. (It's 9:40 pm our time.) He is going to be SO beat! Good thing I bought some ice cream on the way home. I'm sure he'll need some comfort food.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi there kids - Thanks for the update on Duke - what kind of ice cream did you buy? It's a good thing Whitney's such a trouper about the patch - and I think it's just wonderful and a blessing that things are improving gradually and not just staying the same.

Two big pieces of news (although am I misusing the blog as an email?)
1) My mom and dad bought a condo here in SLC this weekend - just blew me away that they would do it! They're going to be moving here as soon as they sell their home in La Grande, althoug the thought of them leaving La Grande make me so nostalgic - I need to man up. And get this - it's across the street to the south of grandma and grandpa Ranquist! One stop shopping for the Sweat!

2) Dennis rented a van for our North Carolina trip so we'll all be able to go to the beach together.

Love you,
Mom

Laurie said...

Great that there's progress on her eyes! I hope you are almost done!!!

Interesting - other friends blogs talk about taking a daughter to the allergy specialist and another taking her son to the ear specialist. Both have had extensive problems in those areas. You're not alone!!

Anonymous said...

Poor cute little Whitney. I'm glad she's such a good girl and the process is helping. I have a patching story of my own. A few days ago, Dave and I went to sit on the couch to watch tv when I saw something inbetween the cushions. I picked it up and it was Whitney's patch from when you guys visited! Dave thought that was disgusting, but I thought it was hilarious. It was not what I was expecting to pull out. I'm glad I found it because stuff can get lost in couch cushions for a long time.