My sister has always had reduced vision in one eye. Likely congenital though my mother worried it could have been caused by oxygen in the premie incubator. When she was a toddler, the doctors thought that they could make the 'lazy eye' work by patching the good eye. So my sister had to wear very thick glasses as a young child and have her good eye patched for periods of time. Not fun for a toddler or anybody else. I remember that the patch was attached with some foul smelling brown stuff.
My sister remembers that much of the time, things looked pretty fuzzy for her. This approach did NOT work by the way.
2 comments:
Looks like a summer snack in the back yard. It's not that I remember things being blury. I don't remember much at all. I have a clear memory of being in a crib and taking the patch off. nothing more dramatic.
Brown stuff was the adhesive that made the patch stay on. Nothing like bandaids today. That's why Mom cut my curls off. Couldn't handle hair and sticky brown stuff at the same time.
Pam says that there were limited results from patching the good eye to force the bad eye to work.
Mom stopped the project when I closed two doors to the den and hid behind a couch and took the patch off.
Mom says I was getting dinner and I knew you were in the den and then everything was quiet. Too quiet. So I went looking for you and there you were hunched behind a chair and taken off the patch.
I felt "what am I doing to this child? I called the doctor and talked to him. You must have been almost 4 at that time. And we had been to specialist in San Francisco and then Grandpa G said 'how do you know your doctors are any good?' Grandpa G made the appt with a doctor from Harvard and we went to Boston. So before you went to kindergarten, we unpatched you. I don't think you wore classes"
Pam says
"Not until I was in a junior high. YOu asked me what time it was. And I said "I can't see that clock" and you were so upset. I got the glasses and then I could see the leaves. Maybe I was younger than that, maybe in 4th grade.
Mom says
"You were younger, because you were in junior high you wanted the eyes straightened. And we had the appt pre-surgery and the doctor measured it and he said that we can't do it because the eye wanders"
Pam says
I was so disappointed and angry. I was counting on it so much. We were all ready and you were going to pay for it.
Mom says
I still remember that minute
Pam says
I was so ready for it and my hopes were dashed.
Pam says
I didn't get the contacts until I was in Illinois 16 years old Dr. Kronenberg said "you know, this might not work" But I was so determined. I just willed it.
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