Thursday, October 16, 2008

Opthalmologist appointment - October

I’m four days late with this post but I’m sure you all know how that old chestnut goes.

Left eye – cataract still stable (nothing short of a miracle)
Right eye – stable
General sight – 6/12 Right eye, 6/9+1 Left eye (down from last quarter)
Meds- no change
Follow up – 12 weeks (12 January 2009)

This is an absolutely brilliant result. Last visit the opthal reduced the topical steroids Matthew has been on in an attempt to begin weaning him off them altogether. The steroids are such a catch-22 situation. They are controlling his inflammation wonderfully but one of the side effects of long term steroid use, is co-incidentally, cataracts. It would almost be funny, if of course I could bring myself to laugh about it that is. For such a long time we’d kept the recipe the same because that cataract in his left eye was remaining stable, which is the goal but it was suspected that this dramatic reduction of meds would shake things up a little. It didn’t. It is truly unbelievable. Now, if only we can keep this pattern going for another 2 years…

The only downside of this visit was the small slip in his eyesight. We’ve not had a good three months, contact lens wise. Matthew had lots of infections and his lens has just generally been unsettled and irritable. We’ve been back to his optometrist, who claims that the lens is fine so why it has been such a drama lately still remains a mystery. Hopefully, with a bit of perseverance (and maybe just a little bit of bribery) we can push on with it and overcome the hassles. How fabulous would it be to see (ha!) 6/6 vision in the New Year?

3 comments:

Jodie said...

Great news I think? Great because I know you've had so so much worse news between visits before, but a minor bugger about the vision.

Hope the lens drama is just a moderately lived kid-bucking-the-medical-treatment scenario and you can get him back on track with wearing it with ease and NO discomfort for the tough kid :)

Anonymous said...

Left eye sight being down since last quarter, did they have any answers?

Great news for the rest of report!

Shannon said...

Completely our fault Sarah. :( He just hasn't been wearing his lens enough.