We had a recent visit a couple of weeks ago, and I should have guessed by the silliness that went on in the waiting room that something was going to happen that day. Of the four children waiting, three of them were named Matthew. Every time one of them was called, either by a parent or the receptionist, all three would respond.
“What?” came from three
voices.
My Matthew didn’t
understand why other boys were also named Matthew. I don’t think we had ever encountered another
Matthew before. And this didn’t just
happen while we waited initially for almost an hour. After the doctor initially examined him, he
put drops in Matthew’s eyes to dilate them.
And we had to go back in the waiting room for another half hour and
another round of three voices responding “what?” every five minutes. It felt like I was in a Marx Brothers movie.
Now here’s what the
doctor diagnosed. Matthew’s vision is
actually quite good. Perfect in his
right eye and only 20/40 in his left.
However, the doctor feels that Matthew is not actually using his left
when he sees. The brain is favoring his
right eye. The left was the much worse
of his eyes and required the second operation.
So in order to make the brain want to use the left, he will have to wear
glasses where the two eyes are of equal strength. If that still doesn’t work, Matthew may have
to go back to patching the good eye for a period of time. He’ll assess that in three months.
In the meantime, my
wife picked out a pretty snazzy frames.
Matthew seems to have taken to them well. After all his father wears glasses all the
time, and we did all we could to make this a positive experience for him. Here are a couple of pictures of him with his
new glasses.
And here's a close up.
