"Doctor, you know they live overseas, so what do you offer in terms of rehabilitation over the next two weeks before they return to the islands?" my dad asked at my son's final doctor's appointment after having his congenital cataract removed almost 3 full weeks ago. "Well, the first step is surgery to remove the cataract and a successful recovery, which has gone very well. Next, is the patching therapy and glasses for which I am writing the prescription now, but as I have said before, we've done the easy part, now comes the hard part." In 21 years, my son's doctor has only known one child in the same situation at the same age who has regained back any site after living with a cataract for 7 years using very little sight in the affected eye. Now, it could be that he had some sight in the beginning years, which diminished as the cataract grew, and that's the theory I'm going with because that would mean his brain has some memory of being able to use that eye more fully and can regain that memory and put it into practice with the patching therapy.
Patching for him means the good eye is covered with a patch underneath his new glasses he'll be receiving in a few days in order to make the weak eye work harder to focus and regain recognition of things in its view. He will have to use the patch all but 2 hours of his waking day, which is about 10 hours a day from the time he normally gets up to the time he goes to bed. In order to get him used to wearing the patch and see where he is at with his sight in the weak eye, we are going to patch it a little each day, working up to the amount of time he will need to have it on by the time he gets his glasses. Today, we left it on for 2 hours, but were very impressed by how well he got around with it on. He is able to see shapes of things and some light and dark it appears because he was able to navigate around furniture and up and down stairs with minimal trouble. TV watching and reading is not doable right now, but hopefully will be the more he practices with the weak eye. Overall, I am believing his case will go against the grim statistics of 1 child in 21 years being able to gain back eyesight. They just don't know my Mr. Gant! Either way, it will not be an easy next few months. He has only had to wear it a couple of hours a day so far, and he was already asking when he could take it off, so it will be difficult to get used to wearing it all the time once he receives his glasses. But we're not scared of the hard part, in fact, we welcome it. Bring it on!!
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