Eye Exam

Derek has his first eye exam yesterday.  We learned about this program called InfantSEE through Mike's eye doctor.  She was talking about it at his exam and how it's a free program for children.  Given that we both have bad eyes and have to wear contacts, we figure Derek is doomed so the sooner we know this and get him to be able to see clearly, the better.

We went into the appointment not knowing exactly how they do an test the eyes of someone who cannot respond back.  The doctor was very nice and explained each test she did.  He sat in Mike's lap the entire appointment and did very well.  She started by squeaking a toy in front of him and then bringing another one up around the side of his body to test his peripheral vision.  If he looked at the toy, he could see it.  The next test involved shinning a light into his eye (she moved the light to where he was) so she could see into his eye a little bit to test for cataracts, retinoblastoma, and eye alignment.

One of the last tests she did performed was to test his prescription.  I was seriously wondering about this one - he can't read back letters.  The tests involves holding up two ping pong paddles.  One is a light grey and the other has black & white stripes.  She explained that babies like to look at the more interesting items so they will naturally look at the stripped one.  She would mix up the paddles and then lift the paddles to watch his eyes to see which one he looked at.  He had to get 2 of 3 attempts to pass that round.  Each subsequent round, the stripes would be closer together and harder to distinguish - which paddles he looked at effectively determined his prescription.  Right now he is seeing 20/20.  Yay!!!

The one test we opted not to do was the eye dilation.  It's a similar process to that of adults.  Given that we were going to be going outside a lot that evening and the following day (with no real way of keeping sunglasses on him), we passed on this test.  She said the test results would not prompt action but rather create a baseline for future visits.