The Daily Hailey

Brady and I took Dekker in for his eye appointment today. We were warned about the eye drops last time, so I’ve been dreading this day since that one. We went to the city armed with a smoothie, goldfish crackers, and a bright, noisy toy. We got into a room nice and early, which was a relief, and waited for our eye doctor.

She came in and Brady put Dekker on his lap. She asked if we objected to doing the drops immediately, and we agreed. I remember having those drops, and I remember that it took a few minutes for my eyes to really blur up, which is what they need in order to get results. Brady tipped Dekker back and held him like a baby, and our doctor put the drops in. No fuss, no muss, for about three seconds, before he started crying. He was pretty ticked but overcame it right away when I played his loud, blinking toy for him. He perked up and came right over to play with it. Over the next few minutes, he got more and more clumsy and hesitant, until he just carefully walked back and forth between Brady and I.

Dr. P came back in to run her tests, and while he wouldn’t look over at the wall like she would have liked, the drops had done their job and he stared at her without being able to focus. After one eye, she commented that there was definitely a higher prescription than she had thought. After examining both eyes, we let Dekker back down to play toys and she filled us in. Both of his eyes are the same strength, which is why we don’t have to think about patches at this point. He almost always opts to look through his right eye, but she said he’ll just pick a favorite. His prescription is high! As in 5.5! Which is insane. We felt pretty disheartened. We tried to go check out their selection of glasses but at that point, Dekker was scared being that he couldn’t see much at all, and would absolutely scream and hit and make a huge scene if we came near him with glasses. So we gave up and decided to try again a different day, when his vision was better and he hadn’t been poked and prodded as much. A few more days glasses-free won’t hurt him.

We took Dekker to our family doctor last week as well, just to keep her in the loop, and she put through a referral to an opthamologist, just to double check things. She said it would likely take a while so we could sort of take it or leave it. However, we got a call last night that the doctor wanted to see Dekker sooner than later, so we have that appointment next Wednesday, at 8am. Gross. Poor Dekker. We were debating whether or not to keep that appointment, but I’m nervous about how high of a prescription he was given so fast, so I think we’ll go anyway, just to get a second opinion that hopefully confirms what our doctor already said. And then glasses.

We can do this. We can do this. We can do this.