Four eyes

While we were in Pennsylvania, I noticed something a little "off" about Ellie's eyes a couple of times.  When she would look up at me after looking at something close (food on her plate, a coloring book), her left eye would be turned in a little bit.  It was very subtle, and no one else noticed it, and it only happened a few times and lasted a few seconds.  I hoped I was just seeing things, and let it go.

However, when we got home it started getting a bit worse and I noticed it happening a bit more often - a couple times a day.  I thought that maybe her left eye muscle was weak, so I made her a cute pink eye patch to wear on her other eye for about 15 minutes a day, hoping it would strengthen her left eye.  That didn't do the trick, however.

Our friend Anthony, who is an ophthalmology resident, checked her out when they were at our house one evening, and offered to get her in with the pediatric ophthalmologist here in town (there's only one so it's hard to get in).  I declined, since her 3-year appointment was coming up in August.  I figured I would just ask about it then.

On the day of her appointment, Ellie got an eye exam as part of her check-up (they did it before I could even tell them about the problem).  No surprise: she failed the exam.  The nurse told me that they would give me a referral for the pediatric ophthalmologist (Dr. K), but that it would take at least 3 weeks to get in and see her.  Literally, as she was saying "three weeks", I heard my phone ring in my purse, telling me that I had a text.  After the nurse left the room I checked to see what it said.  It was a text from Anthony, saying, 

"I got you an appointment with Dr. K today at 11:30 if you are interested."

Wow, talk about great service! :)  Three hours later we were seen by Dr. K, who is fantastic, and 2 hours after that, we were at the local "optical boutique", the only place in town that sells those cute,colored, plastic, indestructible glasses frames that you often see kids wearing.  Turns out that Ellie is extremely far-sighted.  As in, her prescription is +5.5!!

The boutique tried to get me to buy the frames and the lenses from them, but thankfully I thought twice and decided to do a little research before handing over my credit card.  Garrett and I unfortunately couldn't find the frames any cheaper online, but we did figure out that after buying them at the boutique, we could take them to Walmart for the lenses and save over $100.  Whew.

I thought that it would be quite a battle to keep them on her, but thankfully she has not fussed about them at all.  Frankly, I think she's just so happy that she can see that she's happy to wear them!  It sure doesn't hurt that she's getting compliments left and right, also.  She really does look adorable in them.  

And thankfully, since we caught it early on, the glasses will help Ellie's eyes get better with time and she will grow out of having such a high prescription.  Hurray for modern medicine, and hurray for having ophtho friends!  Getting glasses for my child was a huge step for me (I have never dealt with glasses/vision issues before so I had a lot to learn), but there were also a lot of blessings to help us along the way.