Those big baby blues…

The past few months, Kevin and I noticed that Allison’s right eye tends to drift off to the side when she’s eating or “spacing out”. It only would happen for a second and then realign, but it was something I wanted to mention to her pediatrician. At her 6 month appointment, I mentioned to her doctor that she appeared to have a lazy eye, but that it only occurred every now and again. He looked at her eyes and had her follow a light and said he didn’t see any cause for concern and that I should wait until she was 18 months to get it formally evaluated. He said that what I was seeing may be pseudostrabismus where the eye only appears to be out of alignment. I hesitantly took his word for it and left the office. Over the following week, we kept noticing her eye drift more and more, so I took it upon myself to find an ophthalmologist who specialized in pediatric strabismus (abnormal alignment of one or both eyes). I found Dr. Simon in Slingerlands, and made an appointment. We had to wait a month to get in, but it was worth it. He was wonderful with Allie and appears to be one of the most knowledgeable doctors in his field. After her 2 hour evaluation, she was diagnosed with amblyopia. Amblyopia is when the eye appears healthy, but visual information is not transmitted or recognized properly through the visual and neural systems. More commonly, “lazy eye”. Allie’s right eye is not seeing as well her left eye, and therefore, her brain ignores the information received by her right eye in order to avoid blurred or double vision. When she isn’t using her right eye it drifts outward. We were advised by Dr. Simon to administer homatropine drops to her left eye (her “good” eye) in order to blur her vision and force her to utilize her weaker eye. We are hopeful that her vision will improve in her right eye and her eyes will remain in alignment. We go back to Dr. Simon in a few weeks to check for progress.

Here is a picture of her that we took a month ago while she was eating – when her lazy eye is most evident. You can see her right eye is drifting a bit.

This picture was taken last week after we applied homatropine drops. You can see her left pupil is dilated much more than her right one.

Today was another “eye drop day” and she is tolerating them very well. We have noticed her left eye drifting a bit now and then which is a good sign. It means she’s using her right eye like she’s supposed to. Hopefully we’ll get a good report when we see Dr. Simon in August!