The EYE Patch

Seamus now has a Pirate Eye! He wears an eye patch over his right eye for 4hours a day, and we were told to do it the same time every day, I choose 12-4 so that way Kieran is asleep for most of that. He's done pretty well the 2 time's he's had it on(just started Saturday, and Monday he took a nap a long one surprisingly). I'm going to make a blog post with each of his patches in a week, but here is a look at 2 of them so far :)

Day 1


Day 2

Busy week ahead

First off great news. I had posted a couple week ago about Seamus eye specialist appointment not being till the end of August, but then they were able to move it to July 14th and "Squeeze" us in, then last Monday I got a call from his normal eye doctor saying that the day has changed again. On Monday I got a call from his eye doc saying that another patient had gone to the eye specialist that Seamus was going to go to and they were not happy with this specialist after all, so they did some research and found a different pediatric eye specialist(PES). The new PES we will be going to, dh has even herd about, even before I did, a lady at work told him about this PES and how she loves her. The PES we will be going to now is part of Sacred Heart Medical Center, and that right there made me feel better, them being part of a top rated hospital. The best news about going to a different PES, they could get us in sooner without having to "squeeze" us in. Seamus' new appointment is Friday July 2nd!! We have to be there by 9:45 so that means we are going to have to be up at around 7am, and have Kieran to my mom's house by 8:30am then stop to grab some breakfast and head out of town. It takes about 30-40 minutes to get to Sacred Heart from here and that all depends on traffic. I'm excited they were able to get it moved closer and glad that we are going with a 'better' PES.

On Friday I got a voice-mail(I never answer phone numbers I don't know, but I had completely missed this call lol) saying to call back asap, that the speech therapist had an opening and a couple of people up next to get in and it would be who ever called her back first getting the slot. I ended up seeing the missed call about 30 minutes after she called so I was worried someone else had filled the spot. Luckily no one else had called back. We've been waiting for speech for Seamus since the end of January, thats how long the waiting list is, and finally after almost 7months we are in and I'm so happy. We go this afternoon, his appt is at 2pm and we have to be there at 1:45, the stinky thing is that hubby works till 2:30 so he wont be going and I'll be juggling both kids on my own(and its a feet to go anywhere with Seamus especially alone with both of them). I'm not sure what we will be doing today but I'm glad to finally be going.

All this is on top of our 2 normal weekly things, Kieran's Early Headstart home visit, usually on Wednesdays but this will will be tomorrow, and Seamus' counselors on Thursday.

Seamus' Eyes

A couple months ago(I think it was December, I can't remember for sure now), we took him to the eye doctor because Kieran's Early Head Start Family Coordinator(FC) did eye tests on both kids(after we said we were wondering about Seamus' eyes) and noticed how Seamus' eye looked. The eye doc we were seeing I guess was just a fill in and the lady that actually runs the practice was on leave for a few months. The first eye doc we saw said he didn't have a lazy eye that he was just very far sighted and would cross his eyes trying to focus on anything up close. Around March they had to change his script because the original one was too strong and gave him headaches. Well today we saw the eye doctor who runs the practice(and I guess the only one there now) and she wanted to start "Fresh" since she'd never seen us before.

The eye doc did a bunch of light tests with him and said his eye was one of the worst she'd seen. When he looks to the right his left eye looks like its almost sinking into his nose, when he looks straight he will sometimes cross(or get the lazy eye look) and sometimes not depending on how far or close the object is. Looking left is the worst, he can't look fully to the left without turning his whole head. Then came the surprising part, she asked me if he was developmentally delayed. I told her he had lots of problems when he was an infant and toddler and about the torticollis and plagiocephally, and also how he would drag his left leg and sometimes arm when he first started crawling and walking. The next part was shocking in a way, she said they were all connected somehow (we still haven't figured out whats going on with him). She said his eye is a "non-traditional" lazy eye and that lazy eyes are normally hereditary so that means probably from hubby's dad.

We have a new "game plan" now, before it was to try glasses for a few months then patch. Now the game plan is going to a pediatric eye specialist. The eye doc said with how his eye is, and how he can't fully look left that she is pretty sure one of the muscles in his eye will need to be cut/released. They called and set up an appointment but it's not till August 25th. The doc wasn't too happy about an appointment being 2.5months away, and said that they had another 3yr old in earlier today with something similar and they got her in next week and she's not anymore urgent then Seamus, so she said they are going to basically pester the specialist so they can get them in sooner.

Heres a couple pictures of him. We were trying to get him to look but it was hard to do since it was 7pm when we tried and he's had a long day.

This was an accidental shot but you can sort of see how his left eye is



And here we tried to get him to look left, you can sort of tell how he can't look to the side, he's got no side vision in that eye

Another thing to be worried about

Seamus has had lots of issues in his short 3yrs 3mo of living. He had major developmental delays that we never found the answer too, pretty pad Torticollis, Plagiocephally and Macrocephally. He's improved and done better each month and finally is almost all caught up developmentally with his age group. But his behavior is worse then any 3yr old that I've seen, he has very odd quirks too. One of the quirks is, when we are talking to him or tell him to look at our eyes it always seems he's looking past us, we always thought it was a possible mild case of autism(with his other quirks it seems highly likely). But the other day when Kieran's Early Headstart FC was here, Seamus went up to her and crossed his eyes. She kind of freaked a little and asked how long hes been doing it, (now she was his FC from 1.5yrs till 3 when he aged out) and I told her for probably around a year and he thinks its funny. She said she didn't' think he was doing it on purpose all the time. She just go trained in doing quick eye exams so she took out her little light and check him for a couple minutes, sure enough hes not doing it on purpose all the time. His left eye would cross or not move as fast, really similar to a lazy eye. Now we've always been concerned about one of the kids getting this as hubby's dad has one, but we didn't know if it was hereditary or not. Our FC put in a referal to a Pediatric Ophthalmologist and Seamus is going on the 27th of October to get it checked. I'm thinking a patch will probably be what she does, but the other night we were at my moms and I told her about it, she was watching him and said ya she notices it too but they'd most likely do glasses. Either way glasses or a patch will be hard for him but hopefully we can get it fixed now.