Do you see what I see?

So, here's the short story:  Maddie has HORRIBLE eyesight and has to get glasses.  They should be done any minute.  Apparently the lab had to restart her lenses because they didn't pass inspection the first time so it's taking longer than expected.  So we're still waiting, but not so patiently.   Here's the long story...

This all started at the beginning of November when the elementary school held vision screenings.  I was actually there helping all the kids get screened when Maddie got her eyes checked.  It was one of those crazy E charts, where the kids are supposed to turn their hand in the direction of the E,  like this:

She couldn't seem to make her hand go the right way.  I thought she just didn't understand what was going on, but in reality, she just couldn't see.  I was glad there was an actual nurse there to work with her and follow through.  If not, I probably would have just insisted she could see fine and that we didn't need to do anything.  But the nurse persisted and ended up giving me a referral form for her to see an optometrist.

It took several weeks for the optometrist to be able to see her.  Again, we waited patiently.  :)  The appointment went well.  Maddie really seemed to be OK with everything and the doctor was so good with her.  She had the full eye exam and he had a hard time believing she was functioning as well as she was.  He let me look through some lenses to show me how Maddie is most likely seeing the world.  I was astounded.  There was one little sliver of the lenses that I could see through.  Everything else was blurry and distorted.

So it turns out Maddie is farsighted, also known as hyperopia.  This is how she would most likely see the world if her farsightedness wasn't so severe:

Which I guess wouldn't be so bad, but she also has an astigmatism.  Which blurs everything- near and far.  Kind of like this:

She also has amblyopia, meaning one of her eyes is lazy, or weaker than the other. 

So with the combination of all those things, she really can't see!  Which leads me to wonder how the heck she's been able to function throughout her life. Every year at her physical her eyes are always tested, but the more I thought about it, I realized that she will never tell the nurse the symbols or letters on the eye chart.  I thought she was just being stubborn (which she is prone to be), but in reality I'm sure it's because she couldn't see!  I honestly had NO CLUE she was struggling with anything.  She reads, she writes, she dances, and hardly ever runs into walls.  :)  She is just such a fighter she must have been finding a way to make do with what she could see.

Anyway, I don't really know what all the technical details are, but I do know that the doctor said she's currently seeing 20/200 with her right eye, and 20/60 with her left.  By definition, being blind is anything 20/200 or worse.  Needless to say, she needs glasses!  The doctor said after she gets her glasses, her vision should improve to 20/60 in her right eye, and 20/30 in her left.

We'll also have to patch her left eye for a couple of hours every day to make the right/weaker eye work harder.  We're still working on getting an awesome patch put together, but it will probably end up looking something like this with a little bit of Hello Kitty flair- by her request:

There is a great tutorial here on how to make these patches.

So that's the news on Maddie.  We sure love that girl. I'm so glad her school did vision screenings, or we may have never discovered this.  Also, I can't wait until she gets her glasses and is able to actually see!   I'll post a picture when they finally come in!