Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Finding Nemo Makes Me Cry

I kinda put this out of my mind for a while, until I was recently reading another Mom's blog about how she had read Finding Nemo to her son every night, complete with different voices!

I'm sure you've seen it by now, so I wont bother to warn you that this is a spoiler. Nemo's Dad is overprotective of him, which really annoys Nemo. The whole adventure of the story is that Nemo gets lost, and his Dad spends the duration of the movie trying to find him. When they are finally reunited, Nemo gets hurt, and is laying there, lifeless. Dad picks up Nemo's little body, looks at him, and he gets a flash of a memory - looking at Nemo's egg before he was born. I know that I could never explain how my heart feels when I see that scene. Here's why. When Joey was undergoing the first exam under anesthesia to find out what the "mass" in his eye was, I sat in the waiting room. And I remember having memory flashes; and one I distinctly remember, was looking at the pregnancy test that said "positive", that I was expecting Joey. Yeah, it's just a fish cartoon, but that movie will always have such an emotional tie in my heart.

Monday, January 14, 2008

Anna Nicole's Baby Wearing a Patch on Her Eye

While she does NOT have Coats' Disease, Dannielyn is wearing a patch as treatment for strabismus. Strabismus, or crossed eyes, is common among children, and about 4% of children in the US have the condition. I had Joey watch it just so he could see that he's not the only kid who has to patch! I wish Larry Birkhead the best and hope the patching works so that Dannielyn does not need to have surgery to have this corrected.

Saturday, January 05, 2008

2008 Update

Long time since last post. Joey saw Dr. T for his routine check-up in December.

a. Retina looks dry (that's good)
b. Vision is the same (As long as its not getting worse, I'll take it!)
c. his Cataract is still the same (see "b" note above!)

Dr. T wants to see us in 3 months, cuz he wants to keep an eye on the cataract. Call me a nut case, but I am praying that the cataract decreases and goes away. We gotta resolve to patch more regularly, too. Its hard, cuz he gets out of school at 3pm, then two days a week he has Karate in the evenings, and he has homework (which, depending on mood, can take anywhere from 20 minutes to 3 hours - he is a strong-willed little boy!!). So our patching has become only one hour, on 2-3 days a week (on a good week). So, gotta figure out how to manage this a little better, to accomplish more patching time.

He has questions from time to time, like if it would help his vision to wear glasses. I had to explain to him why this is "different" than needing glasses. He seemed to understand. He also wonders what its like to see "with two eyes". Now that he's a little older (7-1/2 yrs!), things are a little easier to explain to him. He tells people he's had "two laser surgeries" and that he "really hated the sleepy medicine!". Talking about it brings some freedom and relief - cuz when he was younger and going through all this, we didn't give him all the details for fear of scaring him too much.

At the last appointment with Dr. T, I told Joey, "You've been coming to see Dr. T for over half your life, Joey!" He was pretty amazed, and Dr. T said "Wow! So I really deserved those pictures you brought me!" (Joey had given him his karate pictures at that visit).

Until next time...