Patch Time!

Little Miss Ella is on her way to recovery, but not without making her own little fashion statement first. As her pediatric ophthalmologist suggested, we are supposed to be patching her good eye one hour a day to help her brain signal to the eye that has been closed for so long to start seeing. Basically, she needs to start relying on the right eye for vision to build its strength up, since she had it closed for over a month (in the most critical time to start using it, I might add).

We have been patching on and off for the past month, but since her eye was starting to open so well, we didn’t think it was necessary to keep on patching. Plus, she really hates it, even though she looked so cute in her decorative patches.



Yesterday we went for a follow-up visit in Memphis on her eye and Dr. Byrd told us that she thought Ella was doing a lot better, but that her eye still had a ways to go. After testing her vision in both eyes separately by having Ella follow a toy back and forth, she determined that her right eye is much slower than the good eye. So, we are supposed to be patching for an hour and a half everyday! This time, we are definitely going to stick to it. If we can prevent her from having terrible vision later in life, then we can most definitely handle a few extra cries now.

Other than that, Dr. Byrd said that she received a very enthusiastic report from Dr. Fleming (who is handling her hemangiomas) on the opening of her eye. They are pleased with how much she is opening that eye and so are we!

The decorative patches do not stick very well so I got creative and put one of her headbands around her eye to hold it on. Can you tell how excited she is about that?



Here is an updated picture that shows how wide her eye is open now! We love seeing both of her beautiful eyes!