One Abnormally Normal Retina

A few years ago, we took Xanthe to the eye doctor and discovered that she couldn't see out of one eye.  It was a shock.  After lots of trail and error, she was diagnosed at Primary Children's with retinopathy of prematurity.  That was their best guess, anyway.  Of course, we don't know whether she was premature, but the way her left retina is all messed up is congenital.  We went through eye patching, contacts (utter disaster!!) and glasses, even though the doctors told us that probably none of it would help.  It didn't, and Xanthe was traumatized for years by the doctor visits.  The eye drops, the stress of trying to identify pictures, the patching, the whole thing gave her debilitating anxiety.  Just the eye exams they do at school had her freaking out for weeks every time it came time.

Well, recently, she dug up her old glasses, put them on and told us she could see better!  The glasses were broken and hideous, but she wore them for a few weeks before summer started and it became too much trouble.  She kept reminding me that I promised to take her to the eye doc, though.  She was very clever about making it happen, too, telling Coco that I had promised to take her so Coco would start reminding me, too.

Today was the day, and it was much, much less stressful than when we visited doctors a few years ago.  For one thing, we knew what we were up against.  For another thing, we didn't have to physically restrain her to put the eye drops in while she screamed bloody murder.  So that's good.

This is the eye.  The light spot is the nerve center.  Now I can't remember what it's called, but the dark spot is the macula, where most of the action takes place.  This eye looks great and can see perfectly.

This is the bad eye.  The light part is her lower eyelid, because this eye wanders toward her nose, and the doctor couldn't get a good shot of the whole eye open.  The light spot doesn't show as many nerve endings, because her brain has never worked with the eye because...it can't see.  The dark spot, the macula, is mostly obscured by the blothces on the retina.  All the black you see on the bad eye is why she can't see, compared to the nice, smooth, light color on the good eye.

Even though the glasses will only help with the little peripheral vision she has in the bad eye, the doctor recommended letting her have them.  I asked for his expert opinion about the retinopathy of prematurity diagnosis.  He said that sounds right, except that it's only in one eye.  Retinopathy is usually bilateral.  We talked about the auditory processing, and how one of Xanthe's ears processes everything and the other one processes nothing.  (She can hear fine with both ears.  It's just that only one ear is sending info to the brain if both ears are hearing different things, if that makes sense.)

Anyway, there could be more going on in Xanthe's little brain than we know.  Or less.  All I know is that, if she had had retinopathy in both eyes, like usually happens, she would never have been on that adoption list.  Wow.  Saved by one abnormally normal retina.  That's one pretty important eye, and one pretty sweet little girl!