Here we go again

So this morning Angela had an appointment with her ophthalmologist. (also known as "the eye doc".) She was supposed to be seen every 3-4 months to keep an eye on her cataracts, but...(I know, call me the bad mom here.) we haven't seen him in a year.

First, last year he wrote a script for glasses. Her vision in each eye was actually ok, slightly farsighted, but didn't HAVE to have glasses. What the glasses do is keep her left eye from turning all over the place. Well, we got the glasses and she smashed them a couple days later. We got insurance to pay for another pair, and those lasted less than a week. A couple weeks later I bought her yet another pair, and within 24 hours she ditched them somewhere between the bus and bedtime, never to be seen again.

I gave up on the glasses.

Well, a few weeks ago, right after I set up this appointment, her eyes started watering occasionally. She's had tear duct problems in the past (was totally missing one and had to have plastic surgery to create one, and a stent in the other one.) so I kind of hoped the problem was from that, and not eye strain. However in the last few days the watering has gotten much worse, really almost constant.

The verdict? Her farsightedness has increased, and the tearing is from eye strain. He left eye is crossing worse than it was before. Thankfully her cataracts are unchanged. "Just little flecks" is how he referred to them.

So we're back to the drawing board with glasses. Part of the problem is she also wears hearing aids, and she doesn't tolerate BOTH things on her head very well. Her ears are very small and soft, and don't really have room for both the aid AND the glasses, so this is going to be quite tricky. She used to wear in-the-ear hearing aids (wow, getting insurance to pay for THOSE for an 9 year old kid was interesting!) but she fed one to the dogs, and insurance has understandably denied paying for them again.

I'm at the point that if I have to choose vision or hearing, her vision is going to win out and we'll ditch the aids, which really sucks since she tolerates them so nicely. But without decent vision reading is very tough for her, as is writing. She has a lot of trouble with visual-perceptual skills, and not being able to focus with one eye just adds to the problem. But with hearing, we can compensate in various ways. (and she'd prefer to not wear her aids at all. LOL)

Like the eye doc said today, she's one year older, and more mature, maybe this time around it won't even be an issue. But just in case, I did have enough money for 3 pairs of glasses written into her budget, and insurance will cover one pair.