Good-bye patching, hello eye drops

We made our bi-monthly pilgrimage to Duke to see Whit's "boyfriend" yesterday. We're doing a "Flat Stanley" project for one of my mom's students, so we did a little photo documentation of our visit.

Here are the kids (with Stanley) outside.

One of the cool things about the Eye Center is they
have a "touchable art gallery" that is completely
child friendly. Depending on how late we're running,
we don't always have time to stop in.
We got lucky this time.

Here the kids are with an art quilt.
All of the artists represented in the gallery
have some sort of visual impairment.
Neat idea.

And outside the gallery, we ran into
the Easter Bunny! (Although
Brandon was sure to inform W that
it wasn't REALLY the Easter Bunny,
just someone in a costume.)

So, we had a lot of fun before the appt, but I'm still not sure what to think about how the appt itself went. I guess all the patching we've been doing was useless because her vision is still unequal between eyes. Boo on that. We've been really diligent lately with those patches, too.

So, now we're on to trying a new treatment. Instead of patching for two hours every day, we need to give W a drop of atropine in her eye every morning. It's dilating solution--I think the same stuff most people get when they go to the eye dr to get their eyes dilated.

I was excited about trying something new and am hopeful that this will help Whit's vision, but I wasn't prepared for how difficult it would be. Sweet little Whitney is and always has been very cooperative with all the treatments she has needed for her eyes, broken bones, etc. She laid right down and helped pull her eyelid so I could put the drop in. But neither of us understood what she was in for. Once that drop takes effect, she can't see. It drives her crazy. She told me four times today, "I'm blind in this eye mom." It was so heartbreaking to hear that.

The written info from Dr. Buckley says that her distance vision isn't affected, but her near vision will be blurred in that strong eye, forcing her to use the weak eye. You should've seen her trying to read books today, which happens to be a favorite activity of hers. She tries to close her dilated (left) eye or will even cover it up with her hand so she can just use her left eye. What a pain! I keep reminding myself that this was the first day of treatment and that she will hopefully adjust to this like she has to everything else she's had to go through in her short life. I hope. I hope. I hope.

We go back in two months, on May 20th. I am already counting down the days.