Matthew's Patch

Matthew went to see Dr. Cline (eye doctor) yesterday for a follow-up appointment to his appointment a couple months ago.  Dr. Cline wanted to see if there had been any change (either positive or negative) to his left-eye because it has been drifting inward at times.  The first test Matthew had to do was look, with one eye, at a letter across the room, tell the doctor which letter it was, and point to it on the chart sitting on his lap.  They started with his right eye, and he did great.  When they switched to his left, he couldn't read the smallest letters, although he had just done it with his right eye.  They also had him watch a movie while they held different measuring instruments in front of his eye(s).  Dr. Cline concluded that his left-eye would/could not be corrected with glasses.  The other option is surgery to tighten the muscle in his eye, but he doesn't want to jump to that solution too quick, because there's a risk of tightening the muscle too much, and then you have an eye that drifts outwards.  So, for now, Matthew has to wear an eye-patch on his right eye (his good eye) for one hour every day, to try to strengthen the muscle in his left eye.  We have an appointment again on June 24 to see if there has been any change to the strength of his eye.

This is not a good picture at all (Matthew actually looks chunky here!), but it shows my little pirate :).  He does not like wearing the patch because he says it feels funny.  Today I told him he could watch two (30 minute) episodes of Little Bear and then when it was over, he could take the patch off.  It was actually okay!  He was relatively distracted enough by his favourite cartoon to forget that his one eye was covered.