Tuesday, March 01, 2005

Eye Update

We took R to an ophthalmologist yesterday and he’s doing fine. It turns out that there was a “foreign body” still in his eye, under his eyelid. The poor boy now has 6-7 scratches on his cornea from that darn thing! The doctor was really nice and gentle (M found the only female eye doctor in town; he figured a woman would be more gentle with our little guy than a man. I know, it’s sexist, but I think it’s sweet.) Anyway, R did really well in the doctor’s office. He was a bit nervous with the big “eye machine” as he called it.

I left work early to meet them there – it was a family event. R sat in the “king’s throne”, M and I sat in the two chairs provided, and T sat on my lap. I got nervous when R did the initial eye test because he couldn’t read any lines with his hurt eye! Then the sweet doctor told him to blink his eye five times and then wipe it with a tissue. After that, he did great – whew!

She numbed his eye and put in some orange dye (like the other doctor did). Then she looked in his eye through the “eye machine”. R kept unconsciously flinching away whenever she’d get close with the light or with an instrument, so M helped hold his head pushed into the forehead-sling. He did great. Not only did she find more scratches, she also found the foreign body. It looked like the one that M found on Sunday morning – a tiny white spec.

She wants us to continue with the antibiotics so that he doesn’t get an infection. She also gave us some “comfort drops” that are kind of like a gel. It fills in the scratches and makes a nice film over his eye, which makes it much more bearable. She prescribed those drops 4 times a day or as often as he wants them. He liked the way if felt so much that he said he’d want them 6 times a day! She also “prescribed” an afternoon on the couch watching cartoons with a cold washcloth on his eye. R liked that advice a lot :>

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