A couple of months ago, when I took my youngest son to the doctor for his annual "Well Child" physical, he had trouble seeing the eye chart with his left eye. He had never had this problem before, and since he had never been testing using the letters, only pictures, and he was just fresh off of summer vacation after his kindergarten year, I thought maybe he had just forgotten some of them and then got embarrassed when he couldn't remember which letter was which. Boy, was I wrong. The general practitioner who examined him suggested I at least check it out with the eye doctor when he came on island. Unfortunately, we don't have a full range of specialists here, so you have to wait until the ophthalmologist from Hawaii comes out every few months in order to get an appointment, so I did, for today. The initial diagnosis is that my son has a congenital cataract, one that he was probably born with, and it is keeping a majority of the light on the other side of his lens out, so he is suppressing the rest of his vision and using only his good 20/20 eye on the right for everything. For example, he cannot see in depth. He sees only what we can all see when we close one eye. The funny thing is that he's never complained about it or even seemed to know that anything was wrong. I guess if that's how you've always seen life than you don't know any different until someone tells you that you are not seeing everything, right?
At any rate, the good news is that it's fixable. The cataract, if that's what it is in the final diagnosis, can be removed and hopefully we will be able to have it done in enough time that my son's receptors in his eyes won't be permanently damaged. Here's the catch though. Medical problems on an isolated island require the patient to have a referral from the doctors here to doctors in Hawaii in order for the company to help defray the exorbitant cost of flying and staying in a hotel there while seeing the specialists and/or getting surgery, so now we have to wait (while my son can see out of only one eye) to see if they will refer us and cover the costs or if they will say it is an elective type surgery or one that is not an immediate concern (meaning we can wait until we go on vacation in the summer and pay for it ourselves) and decide not to refer him and cover the costs. Obviously, either way, we will have it taken care of, but it would be nice if the company could help with the cost being that we are on such an isolated island without the necessary doctors to aid in my son's possible surgery and recovery. It's one of the hiccups of living on an atoll, but I am thankful for a job and an employer who does cover my medical expenses, and all we can do now is wait, pray, and hope that it will all work out for the best in the end. Who would have thought...a seven year old with cataracts! Life is full of challenges and surprises every day, even on a tiny island in the middle of the Pacific.
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