For those of you who are wondering, my youngest is doing really well with his patching therapy and new glasses. The doctor in Alabama had stated that only one patient in 21 years who was the same age as my baby (7 years) before getting a congenital cataract (there since birth) removed had ever gotten any sight back. He told us he would be happy if our son was even able to get back to reading vision at 20/200 in the next few months, which would be very large print reading vision. In fact, according to eyetopics.com, "if you have 20/200 visual acuity, the smallest letters you can recognize at 20 feet, a person with normal eyesight can recognize when they are 200 feet away. Your visual acuity is only at 10%." That's not a very uplifting prognosis for his future sight.
Well, he is wearing the patch all day long at school, keeping up with his work, and reading and writing just fine with the one weak eye. Of course, he is used to reading and working with one eye as he has been doing for at the last few months at least, since the cataract had grown so large as to impair his vision, but it was an eye with 20/20 vision, not one in which there was relatively no vision until again recently. Again, to explain 20/20 vision, eyetopics.com says, "20/20 means the smallest letters you can recognize at a distance of 20 feet are the same size as those a person with normal eyesight can see at the same distance." My son is a bit slower and annoyed sometimes at having to wear the patch so much, but that's to be expected. Overall, it's truly impressive and very exciting, going from believing our son may never be able to have vision in that eye again to reading and writing with the weak eye in just a few weeks of having the offending "cloudy" lens removed and replaced with a good one. It's amazing what medical science has come to and what our brains can adapt to and recover from, especially as young children. Kudos to my son for sticking with it and doing so well!
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