December 12, 2009
Explanations
So, after digesting the news ourselves, the next step was to tell everyone - family, friends, preschool teachers, etc. It was so interesting to watch how differently people reacted. Some went straight to reassuring mode, so much so that it seemed at times they were trying to gloss over the fact that there was a problem at all. Some (and this was much appreciated) threw themselves into trying to help Abby any way they could.
We wound up doing a lot of research, and were so glad to be introduced to the tool PubMed, where the National Institutes of Health makes publicly available articles from medical and other scholarly journals. Unfortunately, the articles on amblyopia weren't as numerous as we had hoped. And, in every single study, Abby's condition in her bad eye (20/400) was the worst included in the study and was in the group which made the least amount of progress. What we found was pretty much what the ophthalmologist had told us - patching is still the one and only treatment widely available. There was one doctor at Baylor studying PRK (laser surgery) for amlyopic children in 2006, but the surgery had only been performed in about 118 kids. We plan to ask the ophthalmologist about this at our next visit, but I'm sure he won't recommend it.
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Hey girl -
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you're blogging about this; I think it will be good for you to get out of your system, and maybe you'll "meet" some new people who can help you. I know it must be hard when people immediately throw out the platitudes that make you wonder if they really heard you at all...but I guess sometimes people just don't know HOW to help and they just want to say SOMETHING. I've had several people tell me that they wish I would do more of the, "Oh, you must be so frustrated" before I begin problem-solving...we all have our own styles. :) Just chalk up those comments to purely unintentional frustrations and focus back on the work you need to do. XO