Strabismus and Why Charlie is a Pirate Now

A few weeks ago, my mom was up here visiting us and mentioned that in a picture we sent her of Charlie, one of her eyes looked a little off center.  I immediately stared at her tiny little face and tried to see anything different with her eyes.  I didn't notice anything that day, and to be honest, kept forgetting to look for it in the few days following.

That is until Charlie needed an early morning bath one day.  While she was sitting there splashing, her left eye suddenly went totally inward towards her nose, while the right eye stayed straight.  It was definitely not normal {and a little scary the first time I saw it!}  She didn't cry out in pain or anything when it happened, but she did start shaking her head a bit and rubbing her eyes.

We decided to keep a close eye on her that weekend to try and see how frequently it happened, and if there was any consistency to it.  From what we noticed, it happened more frequently {and more severe} when she was tired {before and after bedtime and naptime the most} but could occur at any time.  We made an appointment with her pediatrician for a few days later.

This one seems like she was just looking to the right, but a second before I took the picture, her right eye was straight forward while her left was totally in.

We discussed all her symptoms with Charlie's doctor and he performed a few quick tests to her eyes.  As he is not an eye doctor, he couldn't say for certain what she had, but he suspected intermittent strabismus.  {you can be sure that Google was frantically searched as soon as we got home}  He referred us to a pediatric ophthalmologist to get a better idea of what was going on.  Her pediatrician also said that this can be painful at times for them, and can also cause headaches and nausea.  Plus it must be more than a little scary for her to be experiencing this and we can't even explain it to her that well.

In the days between appointments, we just tried to take notice of how and when it happened.  Charlie was becoming more aware of it, and every time it happens looks up at us and cries, "My eyes!"  Some times she would ask me to fix them:(  She has also been waking up a lot at night, which we think has to do with the uncomfortableness of the whole thing.

Yesterday morning was our appointment with the pediatric ophthalmologist and he was really great.  Charlie is NOT as fan of doctors and likes to make that point VERY clear, but the doctor was not phased at all.  There were lots of light up toys and things he kept having her look at.  She did have to have her eyes dilated so he could rule out anything diseased in her eyes {which was my fear from the start}.  The process was not exactly pleasant for her, but we made it work.

Thankfully there is no disease or anything in her eyes, and it is just a strabismus {wandering eye} in her left eye.  Her doctor said this is fairly common and since hers isn't too bad and she's so young, we should be able to fix it for her pretty easily.  We may have to talk glasses in the future, but for right now, Charlie will be rocking some of these super awesome eye patches!  We have to put it over her right eye {which is her "good" eye}.  The idea is that this will then help strengthen her weak eye and hopefully straighten it out.

She has to wear one for two hours a day for the next few months.  We'll go back in the middle of July to check her progress.  Now, I am SO relieved that all this is is a wandering eye.  I spent many a nights freaking myself out about things I'd been researching on Google.  But, this is still going to be an adjustment for all of us.  Charlie is very strong-willed and so this whole process is going to be hard on all of us.

We started with her first patch yesterday.  She immediately pulled off the first one I put on.  But then Emmy stepped in and offered to wear one as well...God bless her sweet little soul.  That seemed to help a bit.  It still took two of us to hold her down {my mom came up for the day} and Skip had to put the second one on.  We had to keep her busy the whole time and distract her when she tried to pull it off, but the first time went really well all things considered.

We have some more "girlie" patches heading our way, as well as a special bear who has a patch sewn on his eye.  Hopefully those help ease the transition.  I'm lucky that I've been able to reach out to a lot of you on Twitter and in the blog world for some help and answers to my questions!

This is really no big deal overall, but if you could say some prayers that we're all able to transition into this process as smoothly as possible, I'd really appreciate it!